Cognitive Dissonance
by AzelmaRoark
Summary: Terra's not seeking the right path, just the one of least resistance. That and love. But Beast Boy's making her doubt her loyalties, Robin's scaring her out of her wits, and Slade...sometimes she wonders if Slade really loves her at all. Companion to BL.
1. Biased Sample

_(Explanation. Important—please read.) _

This story is a companion to Bright Line and they are being written simultaneously. They occur at the same time, with very different points of view (Bright Line is Robin's point of view; Cognitive Dissonance is Terra's). Neither story is necessary to comprehend the other, though they are best read together. This is an alternate universe which begins just after the episode "Titan Rising" and goes from there with major changes.

Additionally, I feel that I should caution readers of potentially disturbing content in both this story and its companion. Both contain moderate language, implied rape and a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor. Consider yourself warned.

Finally, a super special thank you to my beta readers. Remix17 and CidGregor, you are dear friends to me and I cannot thank you enough for your help with characterization and canon checks. And to Avea, I simply owe my firstborn, several times over. Thank you for absolutely everything, and most of all for being an amazing friend.

* * *

"You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do." 

–Joseph Conrad, _Heart of Darkness

* * *

_

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter One: Biased Sample

* * *

**

Her room really was pretty, everything decorated in earthy greens and yellows. Never mind that the color she actually liked best was red, because people assumed all kinds of things about her once they found out what she could do. _Oh, you're a geomancer, so you must be obsessed with all things muddy! _

Soft, wide couch, starry ceiling winking up at her, coffee table facing the window--and a laptop. Cool, slim and innocent. Beautiful. Perfect, just perfect for when she…

But her _favorite _color was red. She should tell them that.

Down the hall, she was vaguely aware of clinking dishes, the scratching of a mixing bowl, heavy footsteps that were probably Cyborg's. Beast Boy was arguing about how the waffles were supposed to be made, his high, insistent voice reverberating throughout the Tower. Personally, Terra didn't really care much one way or another, because she didn't get food often enough to be particular about what went into it, really. But Beast Boy cared. Something complicated about not hurting animals, or whatever. Though there wasn't really any meat in waffles, so Terra wasn't sure what the problem…

He cared. That was reason enough. Maybe that's what having friends was about: you let them have their waffles any way they wanted, even if it was silly or confusing to you, because you wanted them to be happy. And oh, but he was happy. Actually, they all were, even Raven. She had convinced them all, despite how horrible she was. It was the trick of all tricks, really, that anyone could be persuaded to place any confidence in somebody like her.

"I don't believe it--they actually trust me," she said to the laptop. It didn't have anything to say about that.

Terra's stomach loudly demanded that she stop musing, and she had never really been one for musing anyway, so she turned around and walked out of her room, leaving the laptop alone with the star-painted ceiling and big green bed.

By the time Terra found it, the kitchen appeared to have exploded. This place was so big--everything about it was big, and it made her feel more than a little out of place because Terra had never been big. Bowls littered the counter, and flour, and an oddly shaped container of milk that didn't really look like milk. And in the center of it all stood Cyborg and Beast Boy, fighting over the carton of eggs that Cyborg was holding firmly out of reach, with Starfire and Raven watching in amused dismay and bored annoyance, respectively.

"I don't care what you say: I am _not_ eating that junk, so forget it!"

Terra took an instinctive step back through the doorway. It was easy to forget how strong Cyborg was until he raised his voice. And oh, did he look mad.

"Well, why should you get to tell me what I should eat?" Beast Boy was staring up at him, utterly and amazingly fearless.

"Why should _you_?"

"Obviously 'cos I'm so much cuter!" He noticed Terra at that moment, intense expression instantly easing as he waved at her. "Hey, Terra, aren't I cuter than Cyborg?"

Terra clasped her hands in front of her and felt the rush of blood to her stomach as she edged back into the room. It felt so much like fear, except somehow it wasn't. "Umm…yes?"

"See?"

"That is the most unfair question I've ever heard you ask," said Cyborg. "Everybody knows that she…never mind."

Maybe the glare from Beast Boy did it, or maybe he decided to trail off by himself, but Cyborg had obviously realized something important, something that he shouldn't say. It made Terra very uncomfortable, and it was all Cyborg's fault that her cheeks burned red hot.

Awkward silence followed. Terra was fast becoming the champion of awkward silences.

Looking nervous, Starfire's eyes went back and forth from Cyborg to Beast Boy to Terra…and then she smiled widely. "I believe the time for eating is now, is it not, friends?"

"It would be, if the resident bleeding heart over there would let us eat some real food," said Cyborg.

"Perhaps Beast Boy would like to make his own waffles that are not manufactured using the products of mammals?" Starfire smiled sweetly.

"But…everybody likes my waffles! Right, guys? Umm…right?" Beast boy asked with increasing hesitancy.

From across the table, Raven shook her head, stiffly and slowly. Terra really hated the way that she always looked so _mad_, no matter what, making everybody wonder what they had done wrong by breathing. Cyborg just glared in a way that made his opinion on the matter extremely clear. Robin probably would have agreed with them if he was here, but he wasn't, though Terra couldn't figure out for the life of her where he might have gone.

"Well, fine, then!" said Beast Boy. "More for me!"

Terra took a little half-step towards them, looking around for any signs that her presence was not welcome. "And…me?" _Please don't say no, please don't say no, please oh please don't say no, I can't handle it…_

Beast Boy grinned and motioned her over to the counter. "Sure thing! You guys go have your nasty waffles; me and Terra…"

"Would like some 'alone time,' it seems," said Raven, casually interrupting even as she stood up with something that resembled venom. It was like she cut into you with a knife every time she spoke, really. The not-quite-nervous feeling came back, now mixed with at least a teaspoon of real fear. Raven's good graces were like a wet paper towel that was getting dripped on constantly; you never knew when it was going to tear.

"Oh, leave her alone," said Beast Boy. Then he smiled at her again, and she forgot all about Raven almost-probably-definitely hating her.

"Where's Robin?" asked Terra slowly, looking around to make sure she didn't miss anything. For all she knew, he could have been standing right behind her the whole time, and then they'd all think she was just such an idiot.

Starfire shuffled from one foot to the other. "Friend Robin will not be joining us for dinner because he is…doing the lifting of weights."

Cyborg whistled. "Geez…will he ever quit?"

Letting his breath out in a huge puff of air, Beast Boy gestured to the funny carton of milk. "If you don't know the answer to that, you haven't been around Robin very long. Blah, blah, blah, why does it always have to be about Robin?" He turned to Terra and placed a spoon in her hands. "Okay, let me show you the _right _way to make waffles."

* * *

"And then through there is the main computer, but don't bother going in there because Cy is the only one who has a clue how it works. Well, I guess maybe Robin might, but anyway! If you go down that hallway, it'll eventually lead back to the living room, but it snakes around something crazy so you'd really be better off going this other way right here." Beast Boy indicated a slightly narrower corridor with a sweeping wave. 

Turns out that "cruelty-free waffles," as Beast Boy called them, weren't all that bad. Maybe they were even better than regular waffles; Terra wasn't sure. She had eaten until she couldn't eat anymore, and even felt a bit sick, to tell the truth--but food was a tricky thing and you never could tell when you wouldn't get any for a long, long time. Now, Beast Boy was helping out in the grand and dangerous game of Finding Terra's Room. He was so eager, explaining every detail in a frenzy of words that she would never remember…but she just liked to hear Beast Boy talk, so that was alright. His eyes got all happy and crinkly when he was excited.

They passed yet another corridor. "And that's the gym, down that way, usually occupied by none other than the Boy Wonder, off on his quest to become even more wonderful." He wrinkled his nose and circled his left ear with his index finger in a way that communicated exactly what he thought about Robin's training regimen. "I'm sure he'll try to drag you in there one of these days."

"Well," began Terra, feeling that it was time she said something, or else he was going to think she wasn't interested or whatever. "Don't you think I need to, you know, train? I mean, I'm kind of pathetic compared to you guys."

He reached out and touched her shoulder lightly, shaking his head. "Nah, you're fine. But he will track you down, 'cos he's Robin and he's obsessive like that. My advice? Run. He made me drill with him last week, and man, I _still_ hurt in places you don't want to know about."

Terra laughed, and looked at Beast Boy's hand in wonder until he self-consciously pulled it away. "You're hilarious. Really."

"So Raven's room is down the hall--umm, just don't go in there; she'll kill you--and Star's down one flight of stairs on the left." He stopped in front of a familiar looking door. "You know where this is, don't you?"

She shook her head. Terra hated feeling stupid, hated it.

"Your room," he said, but for some reason it didn't sound demeaning, coming from him. "If you need anything, I'm just over there." He pointed.

Oh. Of _course _it was her room. Well, how stupid could she be, really? "Thanks a lot! I'm kind of tired, though, so I guess I'm just going to go to, you know, sleep now." She waved. _Come on, you big loser, get that smile up there, you can do better than that._

"Yeah…okay. Well…good night, Terra."

"Night!" She turned around, face deflating immediately: all that happy was hard work.

"Oh, and Terra?"

_Darn it; turn on the happy_. "Yeah?"

"I'm really glad you're here. Really glad. And you did great today--umm, really." He bit his lip and took a step backward. "Okay, I guess I'll just go now before I get any stupider." Nervous laughter and a few more steps back. "Umm…bye, Terra!"

"Bye," she said, but he was well down the hall.

Her room was dark when she opened the door: well, what had she been expecting? It wasn't as if they were going to leave the light on, just waiting for her to come back. It took a few seconds of fumbling for the light switch before she found it, and she couldn't shake the intense feeling of relief that came with illuminating the room.

She slept with the light on that night.


	2. Questionable Analogy

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Two: Questionable Analogy

* * *

**

It was early, but not too early. The sun was up and everything; she could feel it streaming through her window. Opening one eye just a sliver to see the harsh light, she rolled over and snuggled back under the covers. Sleep was nice.

Wait, no, not nice…bad, so bad. Crud, crud, she was going to be in so much trouble, Slade was going to…

Eyes snapped open and darted around her room in panic. Star painted ceiling and big green bed…oh. Terra leaned back slowly against the pillow, melting back down into the sheets, listening to her heartbeat return to normal. She couldn't remember the last time she had slept beyond sunrise, and it filled her with the sick suspicion that she was doing something wrong.

But waking up here was nice. It really was. When she covered her head with the comforter, even the guilt got fuzzy and far away. And later, she was unable to remember when she had closed her eyes…

"Yo!"

"Nyyyuh?" said Terra intelligently.

A disembodied voice from beyond her closed door. "Hey, sleeping beauty, I'm here to collect you for training. Robin wants to see you in the gym." That would be Cyborg, sounding considerably less enraged than he had last night with the waffles. Beast Boy had explained to her in a quiet moment that Cyborg wasn't _really _angry…they did that sort of thing to each other all the time because they were best friends. Apparently, Terra had a lot to learn about friends.

She peeled the comforter off, a bit reluctantly, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Oh! Oh, sure, I'll be right there—just a minute!" Throw on some clothes, some shoes, find something to tie back that blasted hair.

One step too many sent her shin colliding with the side table: the cactus balancing on top wobbled precariously as she wondered whether avoiding a big mess was worth possibly pricking her fingers. Terra released her breath a few seconds later when the plant stopped looking like it was about to spill all over the floor, or whatever.

"Uhh…Terra? You okay in there?" Cyborg's voice filtered through the doorway.

_Rip_, went the brush as she dragged it through her hair. Ouch. "Yeah, sure, everything's fine, I'll be right out!"

"That's what you said before…" said Cyborg, but he didn't get to finish because Terra slid open her door and waved up at him. Way up. How did he get that tall?

Then she dipped down to adjust her socks and noticed that one was white and one was gray.

Cyborg noticed, too. "Are you _sure_ you're up for this? We'd totally understand—I told Robin that you might need to rest for a day or two, and …"

"No!" Terra jumped up immediately, leaving her socks where they were. "I mean, yes! I mean…I'm totally ready. I used to train loads with…" Whoops. "Well, it'll be no sweat anyway."

"Right," said Cyborg. "Though in reference to that last part, about the sweat, I'm afraid that you're about to eat your words."

Terra was pretty quiet for the rest of the walk down to the gym. When they were nearing what Terra assumed was the place, she could hear two familiar people talking outside and at least one of them sounded angry.

"Just tell me what's on the torture menu for her, okay?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary; just some basic stuff to assess how much conditioning she needs." He was losing patience but trying to stay calm, focused—probably mentally reciting the digits of pi or something.

"Now why are you going to make her do that?"

"Take a wild guess."

"News flash, dude: we want her to like us." That would be Beast Boy. His words made that almost-nervous feeling return in full force.

"_I_ want her to stay alive. I _don't care_ if she likes us."

"Well, I care! And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It's obvious. Her problems with her powers are directly correlated with her lack of control over her body. If we can't get her up to speed, who knows what…"

Cyborg rounded the corner with Terra right behind him, and all at once she had faces to go with the voices. Robin was fidgeting with his watch and standing up too straight outside of a large door that looked vaguely familiar from yesterday evening's tour. He noticed them, and his face relaxed a little, though it was really hard to tell when you couldn't see his eyes. Not for the first time, Terra fought down a deep-seated urge to pull that mask off and see _what color_ they were.

"Morning, y'all," said Cyborg cheerfully.

"To some of us it's morning," said Robin. If he had any clue that Terra had heard his previous conversation, he didn't seem to care. "Alright, Terra, I think it's very important…"

"I know!" Terra heard herself say, mouth running away from her brain—again. "I really think it would be great for me to train with you guys. So, where do we start?"

Robin smiled (or, more accurately, his mouth sort of turned up a little on one side). "Well, first of all, you're not training _with_ us. I'm just going to see what you can do and give you some basic stuff to work on."

Great, yet another thing she wasn't good enough for. "Sounds fun!"

"Yeah, I think it is," said Robin, pressing a button on the wall that made the gym door _swoosh_ open.

"Psst. He liiiies," hissed Beast Boy, making an insulting face when Robin wasn't looking.

Terra giggled and shook her head, waving at him as she took a step through the door. "I'm going to get big, buff and all that. See you guys later!"

"Nice knowing you," said Beast Boy melodramatically as he played an imaginary violin. The door closed behind Terra just in time for her to see Cyborg knock him on the back of the head.

Robin seemed a lot more at home and at least six degrees more comfortable once they were inside…though Terra couldn't exactly share the sentiment. The gym was huge, of course, and full of things that she couldn't name and didn't think she could use very well…and some things that she didn't even _want _to know how to use. Suddenly, Beast Boy's warning started to seem like less of a joke..

Robin wasted no time in turning on a set of speakers, sending some very loud and very grating music reverberating throughout the room. Some guy who sounded angry was supposedly singing, though Terra would defend to the death the belief that he was actually yelling. It was probably one of the worst things she'd ever heard. But she decided that she'd keep that opinion to herself.

"Alright," said Robin, looking exactly as confident as Terra didn't feel. "We're going to warm up first. Just come this way, over here, and I'll show you some stretches. Umm, don't touch those."

Terra's hand stopped halfway toward a rack of dumbbells, and she blushed.

Well. This wasn't so bad. She discovered that she was actually pretty good at the stretching game, and even Robin was impressed that she could get both her feet all the way behind her head. Gym, schmim, she could do this.

"So, what next?" she asked from the blue mat.

"Umm…_Raven_?"

"Okay, what kind of exercise is called…oh, hi," said Terra, catching herself as she turned around to see what Robin was looking at. Raven was perched casually on the edge of a bench. Wait, no, she wasn't sitting on it…she was _levitating_. With nothing under her or anything, just floating off the ground like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Terra had seen her do that before, but it never failed to freak her out, especially when she appeared out of nowhere.

Raven didn't answer either of them, staring back carelessly.

"Not that we aren't happy to see you, but what made you decide to come up here? I thought you hated working out." He seemed to think of something suddenly. "And more importantly, _how'd _you get here without me noticing you?...I notice _everything_." Robin's forehead was wrinkled as he chewed on his lower lip and it almost seemed like he was pouting.

"You were busy with _her_," said Raven. "Must have been distracted, I guess. And I'm just coming down here to watch, unless that's against the law."

_Yeah, just coming down here to act all creepy and float around like some kind of demon so you'll distract me and then you can laugh at how I screw up._

"I am not touching that one," said Robin, holding out his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Nice to have you with us, Raven. Terra, ready to try out the treadmill?"

"Oh god, not thatthing again," said Raven.

Robin looked annoyed. "That was _one time,_ and you know it." He pointed his finger at her.

"Yeah, because I stopped you all the other times." Raven stared him down, completely unabashed by the Pointy Finger of Doom.

If there was one thing that Terra hated, it was when people talked over her head. "Umm, sure, the treadmill sounds fun. I think I can do that." There were three of them on the far side of the room, covered with complicated buttons. From over in the corner, they certainly didn't seem very intimidating, though Terra had never used one before. But hey, you just run as fast as you can for a while: how hard could it be?

Robin ended up having to push the buttons because as soon as Terra tried to find the "ON" switch, she ended up having the machine ask her what her body fat percentage was, or something ridiculous like that. "You always want to start off with walking. It's really not hard—those buttons control how fast you go, and if you want to stop, you press that one right there." He pointed and Terra nodded slowly.

"Got it," she said.

"Are you ready?"

Terra glanced over at Raven for a microsecond. "Never been more ready in my life. I like a _challenge_."

The belt started to move, much too slowly, so Terra kicked the speed up. After a few seconds, she got bored and tried to push it up again but Robin shook his head. "You don't want to start running too quickly; you'll give yourself a cramp, and that won't be pleasant."

At some point, he had turned on the treadmill next to Terra's and entered something into the controls that looked complicated. Pretty soon, he was running, even though he had told Terra not to. From her position over the bench, Raven rolled her eyes.

When Terra was given permission to run, she pushed the speed arrows a few times until she was forced to break into a light jog. It was easy at first because she was used to running away from things she met in the desert, but it stopped being fun pretty quickly. She was out of breath and sweating before very long, wishing that Raven wasn't watching her fail miserably.

"Hey…Rob…in?" Deep breaths, don't fall, please don't fall. Her shoes pounded against the belt, laces starting to come loose. "How…much…longer? Robin?"

It took a few more tries to knock him out of his own little world, or whatever, because Robin's gaze was firmly fixed straight ahead of him, and if he was looking at anything, it definitely wasn't the gray wall of the gym. He looked a bit tired himself. "Go for three more minutes. We need to build up your endurance."

It was like a death sentence. Those three minutes were the longest that Terra had ever experienced, and she would have screamed in triumph when she finally slowed the speed down…if her lungs hadn't been too starved for air to even think about speaking, let alone screaming. Robin continued to run, muttering something that sounded like a dismissal.

"Sooo…I'm…done?"

Robin nodded stiffly, not turning his head this time. "With that, yeah. I want you to stretch some more so you…don't get cramps," he said, words punctuated by uneven breathing.

Terra shrugged and headed over to the mat. Pooh on cramps;this was the part she liked.

* * *

After many lame attempts to remember the myriad combinations of movements that Robin had shown her before, Terra gave up and shuffled across the room, hoping to get permission to leave. The gym was alright and all, but Raven's disconcerting presence was most definitely unwelcome and she wanted to see what Beast Boy was up to.

Robin was running pretty fast. No, wait, really fast. And getting faster. Eight…eight and a half…nine miles an hour…nine and a quarter… He reached for his water bottle, missed and gave up that idea.

"Hey, Robin, can I leave now?" No response.

"Robin?"

The treadmill made angry noises as Robin swayed a little, face still focused on some unseen object right in front of him. Terra couldn't see his eyes, of course, so maybe it was just her imagination, but he looked…worried, about something.

Or maybe he just looked sick. Wait, scratch that: he was going to _be_ sick.

She had formed her mouth around a command for him to stop right now when a pale index finger slammed down on the speed control and didn't let go. Not Robin's finger, either.

Hand on her hip, face set in a glare, Raven gave him a look for which no words were needed. "Time's up."

Robin coughed and stumbled, practiced reflexes keeping him from falling. "That…was…" He had to cough a few more times before he could finish. "…uncalled for."

"Was it really, now?" said Raven. "Get off that thing, _Richard_. Now."

Stepping down in one composed motion, he grabbed for his water bottle and took a long, haughty gulp. "I was finished, anyway. Yeah, Terra, you're done for the day."

"Go to sleep, Robin." And for once, there was no sarcasm in her voice.

"Sleep is a waste of time…I need to look over the main computer; there's been some odd bugs in it lately."

Raven followed him over to the door, though she didn't try to go with him down the hallway. "At least take a shower. You reek."

Terra looked from Raven to the offending treadmill to the space in the doorway where Robin had been only seconds before. She considered trying to process the last few seconds, but settled on asking the only question that was really in her head. "Okay, wait, rewind: why's he supposed to sleep at ten thirty in the morning?"

Raven rolled her eyes. "You're pretty stupid, aren't you? He hasn't slept in two days. Trust me, I know."

"What is his_ problem_?"

"Should be obvious." She shrugged, cape swishing. "He's pretty hard to deal with sometimes."

"I know what you mean," Terra said conversationally, leaning against the wall and trailing her shoe along the tiles. "I'm always afraid that he's going to, like, explode at me for not having my underwear alphabetized. And no offense, but this music…oh, I've just gotta turn it off, it's horrible." Terra reached for the speakers by the door and finally managed to achieve silence. Sweet, blissful silence.

Raven quirked an eyebrow. "Right. Well, I'm sure you listen to Britney Spears so what do you know, but death to Linkin Park and Simple Plan. Robin's a nice guy with horrible taste in music."

"Hey, what's wrong with…" _Wait, did Raven and I just agree on something? Did I just talk to Raven like a human being? _

_I need to lie down. _


	3. Appeal to Authority

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Three: Appeal to Authority

* * *

**

"Ow."

Lower lip stuck out like a two year-old-deprived of naptime, he shuffled into the living room and flopped down on the couch. Crossing her arms across her chest, Raven rolled her eyes at him. She turned to Terra and muttered, "He's being such an idiot."

Terra gave her a noncommittal shrug and went over to see if Beast Boy was alright.

He was already stretched out with a pillow over his face, laying there like some kind of zombie. Terra tapped him on the head. "How are you feeling?"

"Ow," said Beast Boy pointedly.

"Sorry about that. That Cinderella guy is a huge pain, it seems like," said Terra. She moved to sit on the edge of the couch, by his feet, and only hesitated for a second before picking up his legs and placing them across her lap.

"Ow," repeated Beast Boy, a bit more pointedly.

"He's just mad 'cos he didn't move fast enough. And it's 'Cinderblock,' Terra." Cyborg was messing with his mechanical arm, over at one of the bar stools.

"Whoops, hehe. Don't mind me," said Terra, covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers. From the doorway, Raven seemed to find this very annoying. There was that wet paper towel theory again: one push too many and she's back to being obnoxious.

Beast Boy lifted up the corner of his pillow, just enough to look up at Terra's face (with a brief detour to her lap). "Well it wasn't my fault! He's so big and dumb, stomping along like that, and who knows what he was up to this time. It was total dumb luck that he even caught me, but I did _not_ like having my leg almost-crushed, okay?" He grinned. "Good thing Terra was there to save the day."

She tucked her hair behind her ear and started twisting it. Cinderblock had had Beast Boy cornered, and Terra had managed to open a particularly large chasm that sent him crashing down, encased up to his waist. Which meant that it had been a pretty deep chasm, as anyone who had ever seen Cinderblock would know. Beast Boy's right leg had gotten a bit bruised from falling on it the wrong way, but that was better than being crushed.

"Oh, I didn't really, no big deal…" Terra trailed off. _Hooray for false modesty! _

"You saved friend Beast Boy from being damaged…further than he is normally damaged." Starfire's innocent grin earned a knowing smirk from Raven. Terra looked at her uncertainly, trying to decide if she knew what she'd just said. "It seems that such things are considered 'the big deal,' indeed."

"I agree—you were a real lifesaver out there, Terra. Congratulations." High praise from the Boy Wonder. It was a good day. It was a good day even if it wasn't, wasn't because she was supposed to write to _him_ tonight at eight o'clock…what time was it anyway?

She thought about Beast Boy and decided that she didn't care what time it was.

"So, who's thinking what I'm thinking?" Beast Boy struggled to sit up, like he wasn't sure if he should move his legs or leave them where they were.

Cyborg looked up from his arm. "Does this involve Stankball? _Please_ let it involve Stankball…"

"No, I can't play that, I _hurt my leg_, remember? You're so insensitive!" His voice oozed with melodrama as he sniffled loudly. "You cannot even _begin _to grasp the huge amount of pain that continues to torment the fiery depths of my soul! _And _my leg!"

"If you're _going_ to read my poetry books, at least quote them properly. Not all of us are angst-ridden teenagers who cut themselves, you know." Raven rolled her eyes.

"Joke's on you, Rae, 'cos I _so_ came up with that all on my own." He turned his head to smile at Terra, making sure she'd caught the joke. She had.

"Good, because I don't think I'd be able to look in the mirror again if anything I owned inspired it. And my name is Raven," she said easily.

Well. Terra had thought it was funny.

"Hey, none of that, y'all." As if he sensed the conflict brewing, Cyborg steered the discussion back to safer territory. "So, Beast Boy, are you going to tell us what you were really thinking?" He smirked for some unknown reason. "Besides…. Never mind."

Beast Boy stuck his tongue out. "Pizza, of course!"

"Ugh, no, _not _pizza," said Raven, slapping her forehead. "We had that two days ago, remember?"

"Oh my god, it's been two days already?" yelped Beast Boy. "How could we have let this happen!" The couch situation had become considerably more comfortable after both he and Terra had forgotten how they had been sitting (except, Terra didn't really forget it, of course).

"_Not_ pizza," said Raven.

"Sourpuss," grumbled Beast Boy.

Terra snickered inwardly: you didn't have to live with the Teen Titans for too long to be able to sense a full-on food fight brewing. It always amazed her how five people who were so completely different were able to live together and not kill each other. True, they fought constantly, but they only rarely meant it, and when they did nobody could stay mad for more than an hour. She rarely participated in the food fights herself because she wasn't really sure how she was supposed to do it. Funny how the hardest thing to become comfortable with is fighting with somebody; it seemed like it would be so easy for play-fighting to turn real. The day that Terra could food fight with the best rest of them would be the day she really felt welcome here.

Starfire clasped her hands in front of her chest and flashed an inhuman grin—well, she really wasn't human, of course, but whatever. "Why not partake in the delicious taste of avocados slathered in ketchup?"

Everyone fought to avoid giving Starfire the Have-You-Lost-Your-Mind look. Everyone except Robin, who smiled—a real smile this time.

"Umm, have fun with that, Star. But I think I'm with Beast Boy with the pizza thing. And I can't believe I just said that I agreed with Beast Boy," said Robin.

"I think Italian would be good," said Cyborg, ignoring the scandalized look from Beast Boy.

"Fine. Italian. Chinese. Ketchup-doused avocados. Just not pizza," said Raven.

Terra felt something touch her hand and looked down, just quickly enough to see Beast Boy sheepishly pull away. Unfortunately, she also saw what time it was. Later than it should have been, later than she could afford…a lead weight settled in the bottom of her stomach. She glanced around the room fitfully, thoughts suddenly flooded with sticky helplessness. Crud, crud, triple crud. How was she going to get out of this one?

Well, it was all their fault, anyway. They just _wouldn't_ stop talking and she had been _trying_ to be good…

"What do _you _think, Terra?" she heard Robin say from another universe.

"Wha?" Her face jerked around involuntarily. He had asked her something, something about food, probably. "Umm, waffles," she murmured, hoping she didn't sound as out of touch and distracted as she felt.

"Sooo, that's one vote for waffles, two votes for pizza, one vote for Italian, one vote for not-pizza and one vote for…avocado. I think we need to start eliminating based on who's the smartest." Beast Boy grinned.

"That rules out pizza, then," Raven deadpanned.

"Hey!"

This wasn't good. She had to get out of this, no matter how much she hated doing it and no matter how much it was going to hurt to see Beast Boy's face get that little, wounded tinge to it. Terra steeled herself and willed her face to become a bit more pale, trying to call up a sweat as well—it wasn't too hard, as she was starting to feel genuinely sick. "Uhh, you guys, I actually think I'm going to have to take a rain check on dinner."

Instantly concerned, Beast Boy whirled around to place a hand against her forehead, and her pulse quickened. "Yeah, you do feel kinda sick-ish. Wow, that's harsh."

She sighed. "I know, right? I haven't really been feeling very good for a few days, actually. I didn't want to say anything because I hoped it would just go away, but…"

"It was all that horrible training you made her do, Bat Head, I just know it!" He was accusatory, righteous, protective.

"It so wasn't, and don't call me that," muttered Robin.

Terra held out her hands placatingly. "Hey, wow, don't get upset over me, you guys. It's just a cold, or something. I just think it would be better if I had an early night instead of going out."

Cyborg nodded. "Yeah, you need to take care of yourself. Go put on some warm clothes, and we'll bring you up some soup."

_Oh come on, no, don't bring me soup, stop making this so _hard. "Wow, that would be really great! And I hope you guys can figure out a good place to go."

Starfire's big green eyes were full of sympathy. "I wish you a swift revitalization! On my planet, the cure for illness is very simple. One must first hang upside down with their head in a bowl of drobrars, and…"

"I think she's got it under control, Star, but thanks for the offer," said Robin with another amused smile. "We'll see you tomorrow, Terra. Hope you feel better."

"Yeah, seriously, go to sleep because it will be so boring tomorrow if you're too sick to hang out." Beast Boy, of course. It was his version of sympathy, and Terra loved it—she mentally kicked herself for loving it.

"Totally." She yawned and put her hand to her forehead for good measure. "G'night, guys." Shuffling out of the room and down the hall, she listened for signs of them talking about her, but Raven was back to explaining the virtues of things that weren't pizza.

Home free.

Sort of.

* * *

They did end up bringing her soup, or at least, they sent Starfire up with it: possibly just to get her out of the room so the food fight could turn nasty without upsetting her. Unless they'd resolved it by then. Terra needed to stop thinking about what the Titans were doing without her.

Smiling infectiously, Starfire had handed her the ceramic bowl, said something about how she'd be happy to help Terra find some drobrars if she wanted, and left abruptly to deal with the particularly loud crash that sounded suspiciously like it had come from the living room. The fight had definitely not been resolved, then. Only teenaged superheroes could make food a national disaster.

She put the bowl of soup on the coffee table and let her attention vacillate between it and her watch. Three minutes past eight. Four. He was going to be _mad_. The laptop stared her down from the other end of the couch, but she had to be sure that Starfire wouldn't come back, or something.

Oh. Wait. There was probably a lock on this door.

It wasn't exactly a user friendly lock, either: lots of complicated button pressing and some kind of fingerprint system that Terra didn't think was all that necessary (probably installed by Robin at the height of his paranoia). After a few tries, a four digit numerical combination seemed to have been set. Hopefully. She had thought about putting in her birthday, but found that her fingers had already entered a different number. 1230, for December 30th, the day she met…_him_.

Crud, 8:09...

The stupid laptop was still just sitting there, of course, probably just so proud of itself for getting her into this mess. She turned it on and waited. As she folded herself cross-legged onto the couch, the soup bowl caught her eye. Tomato. She wasn't the biggest fan of tomato, but it's the thought that counts. Weird, she had been expecting chicken noodle—well, Beast Boy had probably vetoed that suggestion. For the first time that she could remember, Terra had absolutely no desire to eat. The soup was an ever-present reminder that she'd lied, lied when she really didn't even want to, when she would have rather just gone to dinner with them in the first place and had fun. But now, she was going to have basically the worst evening ever conceived, and it was all…well, it was all _somebody's_ fault, anyway, if not the soup bowl's or the laptop's.

Finally, the screen lit up, and that made everything a lot simpler: staring at an empty monitor made her think too much. Terra signed on to her email, cringing inwardly. She had forgotten to get a new account this week. He was going to be mad about _that_, too.

Sure enough, she had mail. The address wasn't anything recognizable, but Terra would bet her life that it wasn't an advertisement inviting her to catch the rabbit and win a new car. Biting her lip, she clicked on it. _Let's play pretend. Pretend that you're just a regular teenage girl opening your email and you hope it's from your boyfriend…_

Terra read the words on the screen, feeling her mouth get dry.

_Been watching you. Not pleased._

_New orders enclosed. More details to follow. Serious consequences if rendezvous not met. We will talk. Usual location, 2100. Bring your listening ears, little girl._

_And yes, they know that you don't like tomato soup._

There was some other stuff in an attached file, things that he wanted her to get for him, but it was all complicated codes that she didn't understand. Really, what did he expect? If the combination lock on her own door gave her trouble…

She tried to ignore the tomato soup comment. She did _not_ want to think about how he knew that. It kind of made her chest get tight, though, and not in the almost-pleasant way, like when Beast Boy smiled at her.

Terra reread the email. 2100, what time was that? For someone who'd lived with him for over a month, she should have gotten used to it by now, but Terra had yet to see what was wrong with just following regular times like normal people. Probably just did it that way to confuse her, because he liked to confuse her. She ended up doing a search for military time conversions and figuring out that she had about forty five minutes. Forty-five minutes to be there, with shoes clean, hair brushed, shirt tucked in and ready to listen.

Whoops.

It was too late to worry about whether or not the Titans had left (she needed to stop putting herself on the outside of that statement—_she_ was a Titan, too, for goodness sake—if she didn't think that way, how could she hope to convince _them_?). Ripping through her drawers, she managed to find two socks that matched and didn't have holes. She had to stop and take a deep breath when she realized that she had been trying to pull them on over her shoes. She changed her shirt because it was sweaty, gross and had a soda stain down the front. A cursive glance around the room to try and remember if she was supposed to bring anything (she hoped not), and then she was in front of the mirror, checking herself.

Yep, no big problems—save for the fact that she was still hideously ugly. She hated her hip bones; they were alarmingly visible over the top of her jeans, sharp like she was trying to poke somebody's eye out with them. She tucked her shirt in with disgust. Raven was so elegantly pretty. Starfire was tall, gorgeous and Terra wanted to steal her hair.

Why did she feel like she was going on a date?

Terra struggled to open her window before finally realizing that it wasn't meant to be opened manually and that she had to press a button in the lower corner. A wispy breeze played with her hair as she breathed in the fresh scent of ocean. Leaning out precariously onto the edge, she grinned at the silly image of what it might look like to an outside observer. Broken-hearted girl at the top of a tower about to jump to her death. _Suicide was so romantic._

Fortunately for Terra, she was no ordinary broken-hearted girl. She wasn't even broken-hearted.

She stared down into the darkness, willing all other thought away, breathing like he had taught her. Her abilities sprang to life and threatened to boil over, but she gritted her teeth and concentrated harder. This thing had always owned her—but tonight, she was going to own _it_. The rocks below rattled in protest.

Then, it was over; well, not quite over, but the aching pressure was gone. And the large, flat stone was at her feet, hovering obediently right underneath her window, a one way ticket to exactly where she wanted to go. Or didn't want to go. Whatever.

Terra stepped carefully out onto the rock, looking down at the surf and the hard ground and the edge of the city. She wasn't scared of heights. No question about it: she might be a little girl and she might be locked in a tower, but this princess could take care of herself.

* * *

'The usual location' was a few miles east of the city, in one of the caves where she used to live before…well, before _everything_. The precise spot changed constantly due to security, but he would tell her where they would meet next, and Terra knew the area well enough that finding him was always easy.

Yeah, this was it. She hovered over the cave, wondering what she was going to do now. Coming down was really hard…it might not work. She lowered herself to the ground slowly, trying to maintain that fragile balance that meant control. The rock wobbled a little, then a lot. Terra tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. It wasn't enough: her hold finally broke, and the rock came crashing down the last few feet, shattering into a thousand pieces Not far enough to seriously hurt but far enough to make her wish she hadn't done it.

Stupid, lousy, good-for-nothing powers. Terra _really_ hoped that he hadn't seen that.

It was pretty cold out here. And dark. How had she ever _slept_ in such a horrible place? She glanced at her watch: 9:11. Uh oh. The rocks and sand crunched under Terra's shoes as she hesitantly approached the cave. If she could be really quiet, maybe he wouldn't hear, and then she could…well, come to think of it, Terra didn't know what that would solve, but somehow it was better than just waltzing up and announcing herself with trumpets.

"Do drop the attempt at subtlety, Terra. You're not any good at it, and I already know you're there."

She froze in mid-creep, fully aware that she probably looked really stupid. Why did she always look so stupid compared to him? A flurry of wind blew some dust over her shoes, and the yellow eyes of a chameleon glowed impassively out of the darkness…but she still couldn't see him.

Terra jumped. "Umm…hi?"

"Say that again, choosing words that _don't_ suggest brain damage," said a voice behind her. A big hand fell heavily onto her shoulder before she could blink. It felt cold. "Or if that's too much to expect, at least words that suggest _less_ brain damage."

"Hello, Slade." Terra squeezed her eyes shut and didn't turn around.

"Better. But let's dispense with the niceties." The hand slowly crawled from one of her shoulders to the other. "I would say that we have a few things to discuss. Don't you agree?"

Terra just nodded and started looking around for the chameleon's yellow eyes.

Slade paused for a few seconds. Probably. It felt like longer. When Slade paused, it always meant that bad stuff was about to happen. Always. Finally he broke the silence. "I would, for example, be interested to discover what could possibly have led you to believe that it was unnecessary to send along the information you acquired last week."

Oh. Oh, yeah. She finally knew her way around the Tower, and Slade probably knew that she knew her way around the Tower…but she hadn't said anything to him about it yet. In fact, she hadn't been doing much of anything she was supposed to do. Terra wasn't sure why. Defying -- or even just, sort of, _forgetting_ -- Slade's direct orders did seem like an irrational thing to do, now that she was standing here unable to look him in the face. "I…I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry."

He laughed. It wasn't a very nice laugh. "Of that I have no doubt. But you have to consider the possibility that a day may come when _sorry_…" The hand pressed down on her shoulder, slowly, until it became just slightly painful. "…isn't good enough."

And then, the weight was gone, quickly enough for her to forget what it felt like. He directed—not forced—her to turn around. "Stop hiding from me, Terra. I want to see your eyes."

She shivered, but looked up at him because she knew she had to. "I _am_ sorry. If that helps. At all."

Slade stared down at her and finally took his hands away. "It's okay, my dear. In all actuality, it is _I_ who should apologize."

Terra couldn't help it: she choked on the breath she was going to take. "But…but…wha?" Hearing him say that was somehow both awful and appealing.

"Do close your mouth, Terra."

"Yes, sir." Whoops, not supposed to talk.

Nodding gravely, Slade took a small step away from her so she had a bit more space. "As I was saying, of course I owe you an apology. It's such a cruelty, really, to force you to be in the constant company of such…_people_."

Another gust of wind teased the hem of her shirt. "People, sir?"

"You're quite right. 'People' gives them too much credit. The Titans, then. Absolutely abysmal teenagers, and I'm sorry for subjecting you to them," said Slade, voice thick with sympathy.

"Err, what's 'abysmal' mean?"

"Possessing traits similar to those of the Titans," said Slade cryptically.

_Thanks, that helps a lot. _Maybe she didn't ingest dictionaries on a regular basis, but Terra was pretty sure that Slade wasn't paying them a compliment. She thought of Starfire's affectionate (if slightly random and more than a little life-threatening) hugs, and how Cyborg had some inexplicable maturity that made you just sure that everything was going to be alright. And…well, basically everything that Beast Boy did. Sure, Robin was no fun, and Raven still hated her, but she'd hardly say that living with them had been anything approaching unpleasant. Certainly nothing that would be grounds for an apology.

Living with Slade had taught Terra that he tended to turn most everything into a potential lesson, and she was sure that there was some key puzzle piece that she just didn't have. But not answering would be worse. "Well…umm…they're actually not all that bad, really. In fact I…kind of like living with them."

His eye softened considerably as he took a microscopic step towards her. Another pause, a really long one. "Of course. You've forgiven them. I should have known; you were always too kind. I do want you to be happy, Terra." Slade knelt in front of her, tracing his index finger against her cheekbone. "I just don't want you to get hurt again."

Jaw clenching involuntarily, Terra tried to hold herself as still as possible. Whenever Slade touched her, it always felt a bit like walking through a mine field. Dangerous. Exciting. Some other stuff. She hadn't decided if that was a good thing or not, but it definitely made concentration difficult. "I…I…" She sucked in an uncomfortable breath. "…I'll be good, I promise."

Maybe he was smiling, though she couldn't see it because of that horrible, creepy mask (why couldn't he just take it off?). But it wouldn't have been a nice smile. "It's alright, Terra. I know it's a lot to process. Just…be careful with yourself." He gave her a pointed stare. "Especially with that kind heart of yours. They might not realize how fragile you are, but I do."

Terra nodded, even though she wasn't really sure what she was agreeing to. "Yes, sir." It was pretty much an all-purpose answer for Slade anyway, so she figured she was safe.

"Excellent. Now I do hope that you're ready to talk about those security codes I need," said Slade.

"Yes, sir," said Terra. Oh, oh, but his mask was _so creepy_, and somehow she never seemed to get used to it.

The conversation was almost casual. He even sat on a particularly flat rock during most of it, and urged Terra to do the same. Remembering everything he said was going to be the real challenge, but she didn't even have to do that, because he had a very innocuous-looking folder for her that had everything she needed, he said. When he handed it to her, his fingers brushed Terra's wrist. She was supposed to burn the whole thing after she was finished with it. ("And please make sure you don't burn the Tower down in the process; that defeats the purpose of the operation just slightly.")

So basically, all she had to do was somehow get past all the locks on the main computer without anybody knowing about it, write down all the crud that Slade wanted, and figure out how to make it impossible to tell she'd been in there. Oh yeah, and, by the way, she was going to have to outwit a guy who was half computer himself, another guy who might as well _be_ a computer, and a girl who hated her guts _and_ was all telepathic and stuff.

Well, _that _would be fun. Not. "Look…I…I'm not sure if I can do…"

He glared at her. Hard. "You will _do_ whatever it is that I require—certainly I had made my opinion on that matter quite apparent."

"I'm sorry, sir," said Terra, looking at an overhanging cavern because she wanted something else to look at besides Slade. "I'll get you the codes."

"Good girl," said Slade. "Now, I believe you've been away from your regrettable companions for a great deal of time. And I also believe that it would be prudent if they had no reason to suspect that you were anywhere but in your bed, oh-so-_dreadfully_ ill." He put a sardonic edge to the last few words, standing up and offering Terra his hand.

She took it, feeling him keep a hold on her for a fraction longer than was necessary—or appropriate. "So I can go now?"

"I think you'd be a better judge of that," he said derisively. "_Can_ you?"

She stared at him, uncomprehending, for a moment, and then resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "_May_ I go?"

"You may." Slade nodded. "Remember what we discussed earlier: it doesn't do to disobey me. I want to protect you, Terra…but I cannot protect you if you fail to follow my direction. I trust you'll consider this when you are obtaining those security codes, yes?"

"Yes, Sir," said Terra. She shivered visibly.

"Next time I contact you, we'll meet in the cave a quarter of a mile east of here."

"The one with the rotting cactus outside?"

"Precisely," said Slade, folding his arms deliberately across his chest. "Such a clever girl."

"Alright…well…I guess I'll go now," said Terra. She knew better than to wait for him to leave; Slade always watched her go, probably because he wanted to see how shaky she still was with her powers.

_Come on, Terra, don't make a total retard of yourself, not in front of _himShe concentrated on a section of the ground, willing it to do what she wanted (for once). The dry, crumbly rocks started to melt together. Breathing became difficult.

"Through your _nose_, Terra; you sound like a dying giraffe."

Terra halfway-laughed, and it calmed her to the point where she was able to finish. Okay, it was hovering; just keep it there for goodness sake. Stepping onto the rock platform, she looked over at Slade one more time, just to make sure she was allowed to leave. When he nodded slightly, Terra returned her attention to not falling off that rock. It was a lot easier once she got it in the air, if she could just focus until then…

She felt Slade's eye on her back long after she had left the desert and the cave behind.


	4. False Dilemma

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Four: False Dilemma

* * *

**

Terra was naked.

Some people had absolutely no problem with waltzing around without any clothes on, but Terra wasn't one of them. She didn't like her body and didn't want anyone to see it. _She_ didn't even want to see it. So when Terra undressed to take a shower, she did it mechanically, quickly, looking at herself as little as possible—and when she did have to look, she tried to be objective, an outside observer who didn't _really_ have to live in her skin. Terra stepped out of her green sweatpants, kicked them to the floor in a heap. A flick of her wrist and water started dribbling out of the shower head, slowly at first until she found the correct setting. Cold water was _disgusting, _and Terra refused to deal with it. When she'd lived in the desert, there hadn't been much opportunity to shower, but Terra would take being dirty over enduring cold water any day of the week.

Reaching for the shampoo, Terra tried not to think about the fact that she was naked. But whenever you told yourself not to think about something, you always ended up thinking about it even more, of course, so that didn't really work. She tried to focus on the shower caddies instead. The other girls had one each, suctioned to the wall, one beside the other. Starfire's was hot pink. Because no one had had a chance to really go shopping since Terra had joined, she'd been offered the use of everybody else's stuff. Even so, Terra tried not to take much of it, because Raven was just starting to like her and she didn't want to mess all of that up. It wasn't like she needed the razors or shaving cream or anything, anyway—though, more than once, she'd had to suppress the desire to try them out.

Looking at all the stuff that she didn't know how to use reminded Terra that Raven and Starfire were older. Well, not _so_ much older: a year, maybe two. But it might as well have been ten years. It made her feel…inferior, or something. Terra covered her body with soap so she wouldn't have to look at it.

It had been six days. Six days since she'd last seen him. If something didn't happen soon, Terra was going to go crazy. She had been trying, really she had, because she did _not_ want to know what would happen if she failed him twice in a row. Her heartbeat stuttered unevenly, steam collecting in little beads around her shoulders.

She hadn't talked to him, hadn't exchanged so much as an email, but he was always there. Sometimes she was sure, just sure, that she could feel his eye watching her fall asleep at night. And then, she'd shudder and pull the covers over her head, fighting a battle between the rational part of her brain and something _else_, something that wanted him to watch her, wanted him to…something.

He had a nice name. It was smooth and slick on her tongue when she whispered it to herself, trying to see how publicly she could do it without being discovered; a shameful, secret game. His name could do unexplained things, like some kind of hex. And it ensured that he was always there, just under the tip of her tongue. Even when Terra was naked.

Especially when Terra was naked.

Bar of soap slipping from her hand, her stomach got heavy and she almost fell over when she realized what she'd done. Even so, she stared at it for a few seconds, in delicious horror, reading the thing she'd written in loopy, cursive soap bubbles.

Just one name. _His_ name.

Hands hastily wiped at the light blue tiles, even though it was only soap and soap didn't condemn you, didn't make you a bad person, _didn't_… She breathed deeply, trying to swallow…and fought a terrifying need to write his name somewhere else, with something more permanent than soap. The hot water trickled down her back and it suddenly felt either frightening or dirty: Terra wasn't sure which, wondered if maybe it was both. Gulp down another breath, turn around and twist the faucet in the other direction, all the way to cold, ice-cold.

She stood that way for a long time, eyes closed, the freezing water seeping into her hair, her ears, down the tips of her fingers, down, down until that awful, tingly feeling went away.

* * *

The hairbrush caught on a blonde snarl that Terra had to untangle with her fingers. Her hair had looked much better in the past few weeks and it didn't fall out in little, lifeless clumps anymore—Terra wasn't sure why, but Robin had said something about it having to do with iron and protein, and that she'd better start eating right or she was going to get in _big _trouble. Of course, eating wasn't exactly a huge demand (Terra adored food) but she didn't like all the gross vitamins he made her take. She figured that if she didn't do it, though, he'd probably make her run on that awful treadmill until she fell over. After a week of practice, she decided that she _hated_ running, but at least she could go for ten minutes without stopping, now. Truthfully, what she really wanted to use in the gym were the weights. They looked shiny. Robin still wouldn't let her touch them.

Squeezing some more water out of her hair, Terra wondered if she should go brush her teeth. Then she wondered if she was just trying to think of ways to get out of doing the thing that she had to do.

A careful glance over at her sock drawer, where she'd hidden the folder with the instructions. Sure, she was supposed to burn it—but she hadn't _finished_ with it yet, so it was okay. Besides, how in the world was she going to burn it, anyway? Terra had no idea if there were even any matches in the Tower. Well, Raven probably had some, for her candles, but the day Terra knocked on her door to ask for something would be the day Terra lost the ability to eat solid food.

Six days. Six days, and he hadn't written. He would be contacting her soon, and then what would she say to him? And his voice would get that cool, muted viciousness to it, that undertone that she hated, the one that hinted at all the things he could do. He never did them, of course, not to her. But, all the same, he _could_. Terra liked him better the way he was most of the time, when she was being good.

So she had to be good. Had to go get that…stuff…for him.

Terra opened the sock drawer, digging way down to the bottom until she found it. She had almost hoped that it would have disappeared. Hesitant fingers pulled out the papers she needed, skimming them briefly before hiding them down her shirt. For some reason, that seemed like a suitable place to put them, given where they had come from.

Closing the door carefully behind her, Terra padded down the hallway, trying not to look suspicious.

The only constant about evenings with the Titans was their unpredictability. It was impossible to tell whether any given night would involve shouting matches, video game tournaments, very inappropriate pranks, something else entirely or all of the above. Sometimes, the whole place was utterly silent by eight o'clock, with everyone either going to bed or collapsing on the couch or finding a quiet place to think. This usually happened after really tough battles, and it was always a bit unsettling for Terra, though Beast Boy had told her that it was _worse_ whenever somebody got hurt. Terra hadn't seen anyone get hurt yet. She didn't want to. Superheroes didn't get hurt—it was practically a law.

Tonight was fairly informal and not unusually noisy, but definitely not that disconcerting, bittersweet _quiet_ that Terra didn't like. She could hear voices coming from the living room—they were playing a card game, she thought.

Well, nobody knew she was out of the shower. They wouldn't miss her.

She got a little lost trying to find the right place because she hadn't had a reason to ever come down here before, of course. It wasn't hard to remember, though, mostly because of who had shown her.

_His open, trusting face. Big smile. "And then through there is the main computer, but don't bother going in there because Cy is the only one who has a clue how it works. Well, I guess maybe Robin might, but anyway!..."_

Terra didn't even _like_ computers.

The door was open when she tried it, and that almost made her laugh—almost made her feel better, even, because if they didn't want somebody to steal their security, maybe they wouldn't have left the door unlocked. They were practically asking for it, really.

Of course, they probably weren't expecting one of their _teammates _to sneak in and…

The door closed behind her with a _woosh,_ and she found herself in total darkness. Terra wondered in a brief panic whether she had opened the wrong door _(Oh god, oh god, I'm in _Raven's_ room; she's going to rip out my intestines…)_. But then, her hands found the button that turned on a milky, overhead light. The room was dimly lit; there was certainly a way to adjust the brightness, but it was beyond Terra. It was definitely the computer room, though. There were at least ten of them, lined up one right next to the other—unless they were all one big computer, linked together, or something. Didn't really matter.

Cold hands reached into her shirt and pulled out the papers, trying to read quickly. She had read them several times before, consoling herself with the idea that they would make more sense when she actually had the computer in front of her. But of course, nothing made any more sense. Great.

She touched the large button on one of the monitors, waiting for it to load, thinking about how this would make a great spy movie. An image with a lot of boxes and buttons flashed onto the screen, glowing menacingly. Terra consulted the papers, flipped through to the right page. They had gotten all crumpled up from being in her shirt.

Most of it looked harmless, mundane; a large portion of the options looked suspiciously like games, almost certainly installed by Cyborg. She ignored them, regretfully. Another glance at the paper. Right. She needed _this_ one, here.

The computer screen was instantly a lot less friendly and even more complicated, if that was possible. Numbers and symbols and all sorts of things that she didn't understand. But Terra wasn't just here to look at it. There was stuff in there that _he_ needed, and she had to put it all on a disk and bring it to him. She was also supposed to disable a few firewalls. Personally, Terra thought that was pretty useless. It would take Robin about six and a half seconds to get them back up.

Okay. According to the papers, if she used her security signature, she would be able to get in.

_Access denied. _

Terra gulped, leafing nervously through the instructions, reading them again. No, she hadn't made a mistake. That was definitely what she was supposed to do. She tried again. The computer beeped an error message at her, chirping smugly. She hit the keyboard with her fist and tried _again_. The computer didn't change its mind.

This was bad. Really, really bad. He had said that his instructions would tell her _everything_ she needed. He'd _promised_. Had he sent her into this, knowing that she wouldn't be able to do it?

A few more tries. The only thing that kept her from screaming was the vague hallucination that she could hear footsteps outside in the hallway.

Wait. Not a hallucination. Real. Somebody was coming, and they weren't going to be happy if they saw what she was trying to do. Terra turned back to the computer, fitfully closing windows and turning off buttons. Did _everyone _want to keep her from being good tonight?

The high-pitched beeping noise outside indicated that someone was entering an access code. No time to hide, definitely no time to get out. Terra did the only thing that came to mind: turned back to the computer, pulled up the game closest to her mouse, and pretended to be very, very busy with it.

She didn't see the door open because her eyes were glued to the computer screen, some game with a mouse and a lot of ladders. It had silly music. Figures that she'd pick the most retarded game of the bunch. Her heart felt like it was going to implode on itself, but she took a deep breath, schooled her expression into something that resembled composure. One thing about Terra: she was the best actress that she knew.

"Oh, hey, I didn't know you were down here!"

Terra jumped, but then realized who it was. The sickness in her stomach immediately began to subside, like soaking up sauce with a piece of bread. "Hey, Beast Boy," she said pleasantly, twisting around in her seat. "What's up?"

"Umm, nothing much. Boy Wonder just sent me down here to check something, is all." He noticed the computer screen and wrinkled his nose. "Woah, that game is _ancient_. Why the heck do we still have it? And why the heck do you want to _play_ it?"

"I thought the mouse was cute," said Terra with an easy shrug. "I didn't know where you guys were, so I got bored and decided to find some cool games, or whatever." Sometimes, she didn't know where the lies popped out of—they always sounded better than the truth. Even when the truth wouldn't get her disemboweled by Robin and Raven.

"Oh, I guess you didn't know: we're upstairs, doing something really lame and really complicated that I don't remember the name of, and it involves cards—but it was Raven's idea so I guess that explains it." He paused. "And besides, Robin's whining about being sick, so you didn't really miss anything."

"Sick? That's too bad," said Terra, though she couldn't suppress a rebellious, half-cruel feeling of joy. This meant almost-probably no more running for at least a few days. Maybe it was contagious: that would mean _definitely_ no more running.

Beast Boy nodded. "Yeah, so I have to be his slave, of course. Cy told him not to come down here and get germs on the computers, and all that stuff."

"What did he want with the computers?" Terra asked slowly, squeezing all the anxiety out of her voice.

"Dunno," said Beast Boy, glancing over Terra's shoulder at the game. The little mouse tried to vault over a hole in the platform, missed, and plummeted back down to the first level. "I think he was just being all paranoid. 'Cos, you know, Slade's down here _right now_ trying to swipe all of our security." He leaned against the back of Terra's chair and rolled his eyes.

His name made her throat close up in a very uncomfortable way. Terra giggled, hoping that she didn't sound nervous. "Umm, yeah, well, if I see him, I'll tell him that Robin misses him _so_ much." Right—so he was being paranoid…that had to be it. Robin was incredibly smart but Raven was the only one who did the freaky mind-reading thing. Terra hoped.

"Oh, he totally does. If Slade's not causing trouble, there's nobody to obsess over." He seemed to consider that for a moment. "Well, all the same, I wouldn't suggest bringing him up around Robin. The guy's _almost_ normal when he's not talking about Slade."

Terra wrinkled her eyebrows. She really hadn't seen enough of Robin to say, herself, but he didn't seem all that obsessed to her. Of course, the subject had never really come up in their conversations. Something rebellious within her wanted to bring him up just to see what Robin would do. And, anyway…a second opinion might be nice. It had long since become hopeless to think about the man in any objective way, because the minute she tried, her stomach settled somewhere between her knees…

"Hey, you're gonna die if you don't go through that door up there!"

His words made no sense, in an almost nauseating way…until Terra realized that he was talking about the game. She turned her attention back to the screen, where the mouse was being attacked by something that looked like a fox. Why a fox was interested in a mouse was beyond Terra. "Oh, okay, that door, sure…"

"No, no, _that _door, on your left—the other left! Oh, just let me do it." A warm hand covered Terra's, moving the cursor for her, causal because he was so focused on the game that he didn't realize what he was doing. No matter how ancient they might be, Beast Boy liked video games, and he _really_ liked to win at video games. So that's probably why it took him at least a few seconds to notice that he was close enough to hug her and that he was holding her hand and how nice that felt…and how they totally should not be doing it.

He pulled away, suddenly, and Terra wished he hadn't. "Umm, well…yeah, so that's how you do it. I mean, the game…you know." He took an embarrassed step away from her.

Terra had known for a long time that the way she and Beast Boy acted wasn't the way you were supposed to act with your friends, that she didn't feel the same around him as she felt around Starfire or Cyborg or _anyone _else. But she was at a loss for what to do about it, and anyway, it somehow seemed wrong to even try to do anything about it—_he_ wouldn't like it. She'd probably get in trouble, big trouble.

Beast Boy smiled at her, and Terra wondered how long she would continue to care whether or not she got in trouble.

Terra focused on keeping the mouse from being eaten and decided to steer the conversation back into safer territory. "I have been wondering, though…I mean, do you have any idea why he… Well, why Robin's such a…a…"

"Spazz?"

"Yeah, exactly!"

Confidence restored, he had moved closer to her again, and that made it hard to concentrate on what he was actually saying. Of course, Terra only moderately cared about what he was saying, anyway; she mostly just wanted to hear him talk. "Y'know…Robin's the fearless leader. He's kind of crazy, no matter what—as I'm sure you've figured out with the whole training thing—but I guess he feels like he has to take responsibility for us."

"Yeah," said Terra, mostly to indicate that she was listening.

"He's definitely something else, though, so don't think you're the only one who noticed. Actually…" He paused, tone becoming more contemplative. "He's been acting weird for a long time. You might have a point; he's gotten crazier, even for a crazy spazz like Robin."

"What do you think the problem is?" Terra asked. She didn't like it when Beast Boy got serious. It usually meant that he_ really_ thought something was wrong.

He poked the back of her neck, which made her jump and caused the mouse to fall through another hole. "Oh, nothin' to worry about. He's probably just mad that we've finally got a team member cooler than he is."

"And that would be…?"

"You, of course. Hey, how about you put thatstupid mouse out of its misery and come upstairs? We can make fun of Robin and stuff: he's all miserable and it's _really_ funny."

She considered that. She was in trouble, no question about it, but she was going to be in trouble anyway, and she'd _tried_ to get the codes, really she had, but it wasn't her fault that the instructions were wrong… And anyway, she didn't want to think about that, not when Beast Boy was being so nice to her. Terra's lips turned up in a smile, of their own accord, and she let the mouse meet his gruesome end at the hands of a particularly violent fox. "Sounds great! Like I said, I would have been up there in the first place, but I didn't realize that you guys were doing something fun."

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'fun,' but it'll be less horrifyingly obnoxious if you're there." He flashed a cheesy grin, offering his hand to her.

Terra took it, and he'd probably meant to just help her out of her chair—but for some reason, neither one of them let go.


	5. Guilt by Association

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Five: Guilt by Association

* * *

**

Okay, so she probably shouldn't do it.

Robin was _sick_. Really sick—so much worse than Terra had been expecting. Last night, when Beast Boy had coaxed her out of the computer room to play cards, she'd learned a very important lesson: never try to surprise Robin when he was sleeping. Well, maybe he hadn't _really _been sleeping, but he wasn't exactly conscious. It was that kind of restless not-sleeping that you did when you were upset about something. Or sick. In any case, Beast Boy had only been playing around, and he hadn't meant to scare him, or whatever (he had told her so, later that night). They had all been shocked when Robin had lashed out and grabbed Beast Boy's arm. He'd apologized afterward but never explained why…

And it had been especially unnerving for Terra, because he had kept looking at her, suspiciously, like he _knew._ Knew what she had been trying to do, what she would have done if that lousy computer hadn't decided to lock her out. Lately, she hadn't been able to really talk to Robin without wondering what he was thinking about: if he was planning on analyzing her to death any time soon. Probably was. Robin analyzed everything.

But she was going to talk to Robin. She probably shouldn't do it. She definitely shouldn't do it, actually, not after last night. And not after Raven had told them all, in no uncertain terms, that he was really sick and needed to sleep and that they were absolutely not supposed to bother him

Terra was going to do it anyway.

She paused outside the door for a few seconds, trying to collect her thoughts. Tossing the jar of peanut butter she'd been holding from one hand to the other, she pulled the spoon out of her mouth and stuck it back in the jar. It was protein, and she was supposed to eat fifty grams of that every day, according to Robin. Exhaling sharply, she moved to stand in front of the door's threshold; she had planned on knocking, but it opened automatically. Which made sense, now that she thought about it, because for all his paranoia, Robin did usually keep his door open if he was in his room.

"Robin! You're awake! Can I talk to you?"

"Sure." He nodded weakly, or as weakly as Robin did anything. He _was _awake, but looked as if he'd just woken up, and his voice was a little bit slurred.

Terra took that as permission to walk into his room. Everything was so _clean_ and it bothered her, for some reason. Bed, desk, floor, walls, ceiling. Nothing that didn't absolutely have to be in somebody's room. Didn't he ever get bored in there? Oh yeah: he didn't go in there much; he was mostly _working_. Yuck.

It occurred to her that she should be polite and say how sorry she was that he wasn't feeling good, so she did.

"It's not your fault," he said quickly, reassuringly. "And please don't think that it had anything to do with last week, when you were sick. I think that was just a twenty-four hour thing."

"Sick?" asked Terra, stuffing some peanut butter in her mouth so she could take some time to think of a good answer. When had she…_whoops._ That was the only problem with lying: you had to remember what you'd said. But Terra was the best liar that she knew, so she collected herself quickly. "Oh, right, sick! Yeah, I'm glad that you don't think I gave it to you or anything like that."

Robin seemed like he had something to say, but it got lost when he had to turn his head and cough into his pillow.

When he found his voice again, Terra decided to address the real reason why she had come to bother him. "Can…well, can I ask you some things?" Nice and innocent.

Lovable smile. She hoped he'd go along with that.

He nodded slowly. "Okay."

Terra wanted something to sit in, and the chair next to Robin's desk looked like a good candidate, so she twisted it around and leaned against its back. This seemed to really bother Robin. He always had to have things done the _right _way, whatever way that might be. "Well, you know that I haven't been here for very long, and I don't exactly know everything there is to know about all the guys we fight… And…umm…I just wanted to know." She couldn't think of anything good to add on to that sentence so she just waited to see what he'd say.

"Wanted to know what?"

_Well, that was helpful._ But she had to ask it. After what Beast Boy had said to her last night, about Robin and Slade, Terra knew that he'd be the one to ask if she wanted a different opinion. And she did. Because when Terra thought about Slade, she got all tingly and couldn't think clearly; she needed to ask someone who could.

"What's really so bad about Slade, Robin? I know we fight him and I know you all say he's bad and stuff, but how do you _know?_ How can you be _sure?_ What's he done that's so horrible?" Terra heard herself speaking faster and faster as she got down to the words that she'd always considered forbidden, the ones she swallowed every chance she got…

It took Robin awhile to answer. He looked a little upset; Terra hoped he wasn't mad at her already. "I _know,_ okay. We all know." He coughed again, shuddering. "Slade is…Terra, take the factorial of the most horrible person you can imagine, and you'll start to have some idea of how execrable he is."

"Huh?" Terra had no earthly idea what a factorial was or where she was supposed to 'take' it. People shouldn't be that smart; it wasn't fair.

"He's bad, okay?"

Well, he could have just _said_ that. Not that that was much help, either. "That's what you guys said to me before. But I just don't get it. Just because a person has done some bad things, does that make them, you know, _bad?_"

Robin didn't seem to like that. At all. He sat up straighter, much straighter, as if what he really wanted to do was stalk across the room, pick her up, and shake her. "No. Terra, _no. _There are two kinds of people: good and bad, wrong and right. You're either on the side of the law…or you're not."

Then he sneezed, and if his words hadn't scared her as much as they did, she would have burst into giggles right then and there, because it just looked _so _ridiculous.

But she was scared: those two kinds of people…Terra wasn't sure which one she was. Or which one Slade was. She wished there were more than two kinds, but Robin seemed so sure... "Are you saying that there's no forgiving people, not anyone, just for doing a few bad things?" She absently tugged at her hair with her hand that wasn't clutching the peanut butter jar. "You can never know if they'll keep doing them or not, right? You'd have to give them another chance, right?"

"Are you going to give them another chance when they've killed you and everyone you care about?"

That was stupid; Slade would never do _that_. "Well, no, I guess not—I mean, of course you shouldn't _kill people_ and stuff," she said, trailing off when she couldn't think of how the ideas connected anymore.

Robin leaned over to grab a tissue from the box beside his bed; Terra almost got up to bring it to him but he sent her a look that said, _don't you dare._

After a few seconds of awkward silence, she thought of something good to say. "Umm, so say I have this friend, and he did something, you know, bad. But, I mean, he's not a bad _person_, really he's not, so I just don't understand how you _know,_ what you look at to tell which one of the two kinds of people he's supposed to be. You know? Maybe he's, like, sorry and stuff, you know?" Terra couldn't remember if she was talking about herself or Slade. Maybe both.

"Terra, bad people are bad people. It's as simple as that." And oh, but it was simple for him, so simple it was nauseating; it would never be simple for her. "And Slade's not just bad, he's _evil_, and he can _never_ 'be sorry' enough to make him good," he added, something she didn't understand on his face. His eyes suddenly were back on her, focused so tightly she wondered if he could see into her mind. "Who's this friend?" he asked in a very dangerous voice that she didn't like at all.

"Oh, oh, nobody important," said Terra, waving the hand that was clutching the plastic spoon. Well. Maybe she had fooled him.

Looking at him anxiously, trying to figure out if she had, she realized his face looked absolutely ashen. He really was sick. Terra was starting to feel badly about asking him. "Hey, Robin? Are you okay?"

And before Terra had time to say anything else, he had hauled himself out of bed, hands shaking visibly. "I…I need to go take care of something." Terra had never heard him sound more upset than he sounded now, not ever.

"Umm—but—where are you going?"

"Gym." It was almost a curse word, the way he said it. "And we'll talk about-- Tell your 'friend' that we'll talk about him later."

Uh oh. Definitely didn't fool him, then. Her stomach felt heavy. Maybe he would forget. Right. Like Robin ever forgot _anything_.

Except maybe his shoes, because he tripped over them and just barely kept from falling. Terra made a little gasping noise and covered her mouth with her hands. She'd _never_ seen him like this. Given, she hadn't known him for very long, but Terra had figured out that Robin was pretty much _not_ clumsy at _all. _Oh, this was bad. Really, really bad. He laced them up severely, completely ignoring her.

When he brushed unceremoniously past her, Terra got up and followed him out the door because she felt like it was the only acceptable thing to do. "Well, I don't really think you should do that…because you're sick and stuff… and... did I say something wrong? I'm sorry…really, I am…are you mad at me? Robin?"

Robin sneezed into his hand, not looking at her. Oh, god, he looked sick. He couldn't even walk in a straight line. Terra sincerely doubted that he would make it ten steps down the hall, let alone all the way to the gym.

"Okay, well, I'll see you…later?" Her voice echoed after him but he didn't respond.

Terra watched him go, counting out his steps and feeling a bit better when he did make it past ten. He was unsteady, though. And Terra had watched Robin train enough times to know that the idea of him surviving his normal routine was definitely out of the question. Before he turned the corner and she lost sight of him entirely, Terra saw him stumble and just manage to keep his balance.

_Uh uh._

She had to do something. It was all her fault that he was mad, but he wasn't listening to her and she just couldn't think of anything that would make everything okay. Terra twisted the spoon around in the peanut butter jar for a long moment, running through her options. She should go tell somebody. But she couldn't bring herself to upset Starfire and Beast Boy was so freaked out about last night that he wouldn't want to get anywhere near him and Cyborg would just say they should leave him alone—and Terra didn't think he _should_ be left alone.

But Raven. Yeah. Raven would be good. She did that creepy mind-reading thing.

_Crud, crud: that means I have to go knock on her door!

* * *

_

"Hey…Raven_?" Raven Your Highness, Your Excellency, Raven-Please-Don't-Kill-Me. _"Are you in there? Are you busy?"

Silence. Terra wondered if this was really such a good idea.

"It's me; it's Terra," she said, twisting her hair. "I kind of need your help. It's…I think it's an emergency."

Some more silence. And then finally, a small crack opened in the door, just a few inches. "You're got five seconds," said Raven, the hood of her cloak pulled up over her head.

"I-think-there's-something-really-wrong-with-Robin-you've-gotta-help-me-I-don't-know-what-to-do!" It all came out, breathlessly, as one word. Well, she'd _said_ that Terra had five seconds; she wasn't going to waste them.

The door opened a bit wider. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know," said Terra, a bit more relaxed after her five seconds were up and Raven hadn't slammed the door in her face. "Well—okay, I kind of do, I guess—I went to talk to him about some stuff, and I guess he got really mad at me or whatever, because he said he was gonna go train. And I don't think he should train now, Raven, I really don't."

"Train?" Raven asked incredulously. She didn't even seem mad about Terra bothering Robin.

Terra nodded. "Yeah, train, and he was really bad off when he left for the gym, and I got so worried, so I thought you might be able to help because of your…you know... powers…"

"Right. I'll take care of it," said Raven, pulling off her hood in a swift, elegant motion. Her door slid open the rest of the way. "Thanks for letting me know."

They stared at each other for a moment that somehow took forever and no time at all. Terra couldn't really pinpoint the exact point at which Raven had stopped being her number-one enemy, but she figured it had something to do with what Beast Boy had told her on her first night here, about being friends. You fought with your friends, but you also stood by them and helped them when they were in trouble—and Terra was starting to appreciate that. Terra was also starting to understand some things about Raven, like how she seemed to glare at _everybody _as if she wanted to exterminate them…but didn't really mean it.

You knew those kinds of things, when you were friends with somebody.

"No problem," said Terra. "He's in the gym, like I said. I'd hurry."

"Don't need to tell me twice." And she teleported out of sight in an unsettling flash.

"But I _didn't _tell you…oh, never mind," Terra said to the empty hallway. Raven hadn't even locked her door. She must have been really worried.

"Oh my fair, gothic princess?" A boyish voice from just around the corner. "Cyborg wants me to tell you that he's making dinner in fifteen minutes and we need to know if you're going to be eating with us or spending the evening with your tea and creepy old books…" Beast Boy realized who he had been talking to. "Wow, I didn't expect to see you down here…not that it's not awesome that you're down here, but…yeah."

Terra waved, feeling that spontaneous smile creep over her face. "Hey! Raven's not here right now: umm, she had to…take a shower." For some reason, Terra didn't think it would be a good idea to tell him what Raven was really doing.

"Figures that the one time somebody actually _needs_ her, she'd be out of her room," Beast Boy muttered. He glanced over Terra's shoulder, through the half-open door behind her. "Weird that she didn't lock her door. Or even close it."

"Well, we could always…see if there's anything interesting in there." Terra giggled.

His eyes widened sharply and he backed away, shaking his head. "Dude, no way; I _so_ learned my lesson the last time I snuck into her room."

"You did…what?"

Beast Boy grinned. "Yeah, me an' Cy were just trying to talk to her this one time, but her door was unlocked, and we didn't _mean_ to go in there…but we definitely found more than we wanted to find."

"What was in there?" asked Terra, caught between fascination and horror.

"Tons of creepy stuff, but mostly some whacked-out portal into her brain. It was really dangerous, and she was _really_ mad at us. But of course, I saved everyone with my awesome powers, and the whole thing was all right in the end."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Terra wasn't sure if that was _exactly_ the way things had happened, but it made her laugh anyway. "That's great. Really…great." She took a deep breath and tried to think of something else to say. Their shoes were almost touching each other…

"So, Cyborg's making dinner soon, huh?" she finally asked, when she'd gotten tired of listening to her heart threaten to stop working.

He shifted nervously. "Yeah. Knowing him, it'll have disgusting animal products in it because he's a murderer like that."

"I'm sorry," said Terra.

"Oh no, I was just kidding: it's practically a law that we have to fight about every meal we eat. I'll just plot to get even with him in some horrifying way or another—and you can totally help, of course." He smiled with his eyes: the way he looked at her with absolute faith and…something else.

"I'd like that, yeah," she said, and she could have sworn that she was just planning to reach out and poke him. But somehow she ended up touching his hand, then weaving her fingers through his.

He looked down, as if this was a difficult math problem that he had five seconds to solve. "Really? Great! 'Cos it would be really…great. You know: if you wanted to." His voice cracked, but Terra thought that was cute. "And I…can't remember what we were talking about. Ugh, I'm sorry. I fail at this game."

"What game?"

"Well…" Beast Boy tried to look her in the eyes but ended up looking straight at her left ear. "It's the game I'm so bad at that I can't even say what it is."

He didn't even need to say it: Terra had a pretty good idea of what it was, anyway. She squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Well, in case you were wondering, the answer is yes."

_"Really?"_ he yelped, letting go of her as if he'd been shocked. "I mean, of course, I guess I should make sure we're on the same page, right? You do mean that…y'know…with me…and stuff?"

She put her arms around his neck—it wasn't hard because he wasn't any taller than she was—and told the warning sirens in her head to stuff it.

"I totally mean it. With you. And stuff."

And then, Terra didn't think about much else, because somehow they were kissing. She didn't know who had started it, and she didn't care. She'd never done this before, and it was pretty clear that he hadn't, either: he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, but she sure didn't have any suggestions. For a terrifying moment, she worried that she wasn't doing it right, but then the only thing she worried about was that she'd start smiling like an idiot—because you couldn't really do that when you were kissing someone.

It was a lot wetter than she'd expected. In a good way. She felt warm and happy when they broke apart.

"Well, _say_ something!" He was blushing and had gone back to looking at her left ear.

_Now_ she could smile. "Umm…I think it's about time…Cyborg…dinner…and all that."

"Yeah. Dinner. And Cyborg. And dinner. That would be good," he agreed.

About halfway to the kitchen, his arm found its way around her waist. Terra leaned into him cautiously, even when what she really wanted to do was to run down the hall screaming, _I have a boyfriend! _It made her feel…complete, somehow. Much better than she'd felt in a long time. And somehow, all of the problems she'd had that evening didn't seem important anymore—she couldn't even remember why she'd been so upset about them in the first place, because who could be upset when they had a boyfriend? Things were easier this way. She still didn't understand that not-quite-nervousness that settled in the middle of her chest when he touched her, but she was absolutely positive that she never wanted it to go away.

She could handle anything, now.


	6. Gambler's Fallacy

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Six: Gambler's Fallacy

* * *

**

"Indeed. He's ill, then?"

"Oh yeah, he's _way_ sick. Like, can't-even-get-out-of-bed sick. An' Raven said that if I so much as thought about bothering him again, I was going to need reconstructive surgery, whatever that is."

He stared down at her, looking almost amused. As amused as he ever looked, anyway. "Surely you weren't 'bothering' him, were you, my dear?"

Terra shuffled her feet, turning away to study the rotting cactus near the mouth of the cave. "I wasn't _really_ bothering him, sir. I just wanted to talk to him about some stuff; I didn't know he was that sick." It was _so_ late. So late that it was early. She did not enjoy being woken up by her beeping laptop at four in the morning, but if that was when he wanted her, then, well, that was when she had to come.

Slade nodded sympathetically, placing a big hand on her shoulder. "Of course you didn't; you would never intentionally cause harm to another. And I'm certain that Raven considered this when she threatened you, as well, don't you think?"

"No…no, actually, she didn't," said Terra, wrinkling her forehead. But it wasn't like that: Raven had been nice to her, and they'd agreed, really they had, and when she said that thing later on, about the surgery, she had only been joking…Slade's hand was warm and heavy.

"So I feared," said Slade. "Such heartless behavior is truly emblematic of the Titans, after all."

But they weren't heartless; they weren't heartless at all… were they? "Yes, sir," she answered quietly, unhappily. Terra thought that maybe she should keep her uncertainty to herself, which she hated because Slade had a way of pulling all the secrets out of her, like dragging a fish up from the bottom of a lake. It made her feel, well, _bad,_ not to tell him every single thing she was thinking.

"Out of curiosity, what were you discussing with Robin?"

She shrugged, feeling her pulse quicken and suspecting that this was another one of those things that she shouldn't say. Because she'd been asking Robin about _Slade,_ and Slade couldn't know that, of course. "Nothing important. Just stuff."

"My dear, I'm certain that any topic that merited disturbing Robin while he was ill had to be of utmost consequence, given how much consideration you have for the well-being of others." Slade's fingers moved in slow circles along the place where neck joined shoulder, and her breath caught in her throat. "You have nothing to be afraid of, Terra; all I ask is that you tell the truth."

_But the truth is so hard, and I don't even know what it is anymore._ "I guess I've just been confused about some stuff lately." That would be okay to say, she thought. As long as she didn't mention that Slade himself had come up in the conversation, he couldn't possibly figure it out.

"Ah?" he murmured encouragingly. "Please, do elaborate."

"Well, like, I'm trying so hard to be good, you know? But I'm not really sure that I'm doing the right thing at all—and it seems like all I ever do is let people down." She was letting Slade down by being such a failure as a spy, and she was letting the Titans down by coming out here in the first place because that probably wasn't something they wanted. Terra wanted to please all of them but ended up pleasing nobody. Not even herself. Because she sure did hate herself, right at that moment, when Slade turned her around gently to look into her eyes with…disappointment? Maybe, but it looked more dangerous than that. Or maybe she was just thinking that because Robin had confused her with how bad Slade was, even though he hadn't actually _said_ anything.

"Terra, are you trying to tell me that you failed to follow my exceedingly simple instructions to infiltrate the security system?"

He took his hand away from her, and Terra immediately pulled her jacket up to cover her neck. It made her feel less exposed, though she did miss the touch. "Well…umm…"

_"_Ter-_ruh." _That eye did not look happy.

"I didn't, okay, but let me explain!" She backed away from him, sensing that distance would be good until she knew what his reaction would be; Slade was unpredictable in the best of circumstances, and these weren't so great as far as circumstances were concerned. "I tried—like seven thousand times—but your directions didn't work, I _swear_ they didn't. I kept getting locked out: it told me 'access denied,' or whatever." Terra closed her mouth and stared hard at Slade, trying to gauge how he was taking that.

"Did it, really?"

Terra watched something sharp and decisive glint across his eye, and it made her shudder, but then, by some miracle, it was gone and he was back to normal. Relieved beyond all rational thought, she let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding: he wasn't going to get mad. She wasn't in trouble. "It did, I swear, sir: I tried. And I'll try again if you want me to. I really, really want to be good, but sometimes it's so hard…"

He was at her side before she really processed that he'd moved forward, kneeling down to look her straight in the face. Powerful fingers brushed Terra's hair behind her ears, hands lingering along the sides of her face. For some reason, she liked the idea that someone who was such a brutal fighter was gentle to _her_—only to her. "Oh, Terra. If your task was upsetting you this much, you should have told me long before this morning."

"So…you aren't mad?"

He ran one finger down her hairline. "Angry? At you? Oh, no. I should have realized that the task was too complicated and dangerous for such a fragile girl as yourself."

No, no she wasn't fragile…but she couldn't deny that she liked it when he called her fragile. "Yeah, it's just 'cos I'm too dumb, I guess. I just don't know anything about computers: I can't even play the games right; Beast Boy has to do it for me—he's my boyfriend now, you know." She remembered the mouse game and smiled in spite of herself. "But if you had anything _easier_ for me to do, then maybe…maybe I could try to make it up to you?"

Slade's fingers snaked into her hair and he stared at her, as if she was on an operating table and he was about to slice out her entrails and organize them on a tray. Terra gulped, trying frantically to figure out what she had said that he didn't like. Finally, he pulled away from her, slightly, just enough to take something out of his belt. Something small and shiny. "In actuality, if it wouldn't be too vexing, I do have one minor errand for you."

The look was gone. The fingers were gone. Terra grinned, her relief palpable. "Great! I'll do it right now!"

"It's really quite insignificant, but if you could possibly be bothered to place this…" He paused and held the object out to her, a silvery compact disk like the ones that movies came on, with a plastic cover. "…out with the mail this morning, I would be most appreciative."

Terra took it from him, squinting to read anything that might be written on it. It was really dark outside, still, so that didn't help at all. "What is it?"

"Its contents are of no import to you, rest assured," said Slade. "You needn't trouble yourself with it: simply leave the disk with the mail and forget all about it."

Well. That was easy enough. Under normal circumstances, Terra wouldn't be able to resist trying to find out what was on the disk, but she'd already used up all her lucky breaks for at least the next fifty years, and she wasn't about to push fate any further. "Yes, sir. I can definitely do that." She nodded vehemently, making a move to stuff the disk in her pocket.

"Don't scratch the case, Terra," he admonished. Terra blushed and put the disk away more carefully, finding that she'd already started to forget about it once it was out of sight.

"Excellent," said Slade, guiding her attention back to his masked face. "Oh, and Terra: just so you aren't frightened when the time comes, I will be instigating a…_conflict,_ of sorts, with your companions, in approximately four hours and eighteen minutes."

Crud. Crud, crud. She was going to have to _fight_ him? Terra suddenly felt nauseated, like she'd stayed out in the sun far too long. The fight with Cinderblock awhile back had been scary enough. What was she going to do, what could she possibly do…?

"Don't worry, my dear—you know I'd never harm you," Slade murmured soothingly, as if he'd read her mind. "All the same, however, I should think it necessary that the Titans remain blissfully unaware of what we have discussed this morning. You are not to give the impression that we have been in contact—understood?"

"Oh, yes, sir; I totally understand. They won't know." It would be fine; Terra was a good liar. Even though it was going to be pretty hard to pretend to fight Slade when she didn't really want to…Terra didn't like to fight anyway, and it seemed particularly wrong to fight someone who made her feel…well, like Slade made her feel.

"I have no doubt that you will keep our discussions confidential," said Slade, nodding formally. "That said, why don't you get some rest before your abilities are required? I daresay that you will need it." He stood up with finality, making Terra think that there was really only one right answer to his question.

"Yes, sir." _That _answer.

"That's my girl." Not for the first time, he had that look about him that meant he was smiling behind the mask—not a very nice smile. "Do continue to check your email, if you wouldn't mind. Our next meeting will be…quite important." There was something under the last two words, something toxic and sinister that coated her stomach with slippery fear.

And Terra thought about those words, and that hidden not-nice smile, long after she'd snuck back into the Tower and up to her room and slithered under the covers. It made her stomach tighten, not unlike the way she felt when she was around Beast Boy: that feeling that wasn't really nervousness. He had frightened her, like he always did, and yet… Eventually, she fell asleep to half-professed emotions and longings that she didn't understand.

* * *

Terra woke up to yelling.

Her first thought, steeped in hazy sleep deprivation, was that the yelling voice was in trouble for being loud and possibly waking up Robin. Her second thought was that _she _was in trouble because she'd slept right through the alarm.

Well, what did he expect: it was early and she was _tired._

"Terra!" The yelling voice kicked her door. "Babe, you've gotta get up, _now!"_

She swung her legs over the side of her bed, stretching her arms up to the ceiling and yawning. "But…why?" Because Terra wasn't supposed to know why, she reminded herself, since she had absolutely-probably-definitely not been having a conversation with the guy who was attacking them. She shuffled over to her door and opened it, and Beast Boy tumbled in and grabbed her gently by the arms.

"It's Slade, okay, so we have to hurry, and we can't mess up," he said. Wide awake and grim, his voice had lost every last ounce of playful flippancy. And when Beast Boy was wide awake at nine in the morning on a Saturday when there weren't even any good cartoons on, you knew something was seriously wrong.

Terra let herself take in a sharp breath. "Slade, oh wow, the freak of nature that attacked the mine that day, right? And the one that Robin's obsessed with?" She saw him nod. "Woah, yeah, definitely want to be careful, then. I'll be right there, just let me…"

"No time; come _on,_ Terra!"

He pulled her towards the door and she just barely had the chance to drag her shoes out from under her bed and—thank goodness she remembered—grab Slade's disk off her bedside table. Beast Boy didn't notice, pulling her out of the room and then breaking into a run as they reached the hallway.

Cyborg and Starfire were already in the living room, looking much more prepared than she was. "Good: you found her," said Cyborg tensely. He started talking, tone severe and rapid, explaining what the mission was, or whatever. Terra wondered why he had suddenly gone all leader-mode; she figured that Robin was too sick to fight, obviously, but who said Cyborg could be the assistant leader? Nobody had ever thought to ask her if _she _wanted to. She didn't, but that was beside the point. You were supposed to ask about these things, weren't you? Weren't they all supposed to be equals and stuff? So how come Cyborg was automatically the leader without a vote or anything?

Terra's eyes immediately wandered to the little, round table near the couch, where somebody had thrown the mail. It was nice and messy, not organized into anything that looked like a stack, which was what made her think that Beast Boy had put it there. She smiled. They were so much alike. She casually backed away from the circle, pretending to be very interested in a letter with crayon drawings of Starfire all over it.

"Terra! Pay attention!"

She jumped about sixteen feet when she heard that, because Cyborg sounded so angry, like her first night here with the waffles all over again. "Sorry, sorry, I was listening!" Terra bit her lip, turned at an angle where they wouldn't see what she was doing, and shoved the disk under Starfire's fan mail. Spinning around to face them, she put on a serious face and tried to look worried. But Slade had said he wouldn't hurt anyone at all, so it was hard to look worried…

"Umm, right," said Cyborg, seeming several shades of unconvinced. "So you got the part about him threatening to blow up the hospital."

Terra felt a little cold. He hadn't said anything about hospitals. And Slade had said he wouldn't hurt anybody…at least, she distinctly remembered something about not hurting people, though now that she thought about it maybe he'd only promised not to hurt _her_…but Slade wouldn't break his promise, anyway.

Raven materialized behind Starfire, shimmering in that eerie, black outline for a split second before becoming fully visible. Teleporting was so creepy. "Terra? Comprehend something? Surely you jest."

"The situation is most dire," began Starfire, clasping Raven's hand tightly (Raven winced). "We have received word that Slade is…"

"Hospital, yes, I know," Raven spat, snatching her hand away as soon as Starfire had stopped squeezing. She looked dangerous for some reason; more dangerous than Terra had ever seen her. "Let's just do this."

"Did Robin ever calm down?" asked Cyborg.

Raven shrugged. "As calm as he's going to get, given the circumstances. Just…leave him out of this, okay?" A strange, haunted look was fast infusing her features and at that moment she sounded less like _Raven _and Terra suddenly realized that the other girl wasn't that much older than _she_ was, not the adult she usually seemed like. Terra didn't know what it meant and she didn't think it was good, but she just had too much to worry about without adding Raven and her dark, depressing problems.

Cyborg nodded. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but stopped himself. Terra had a pretty good idea of what it was, and she agreed; making fun of Robin was fine when he was there to defend himself, but not so fine when he was sick and miserable.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Raven," said Beast Boy solemnly. "Let's…"

"…just do this," finished Starfire, looking like what she really wanted to do was sit by Robin's bed and cry.

* * *

Terra had never even been in a hospital: not that she could remember, anyway. When you lived in the desert, you just didn't do that sort of thing. Luckily, she'd never really been hurt or sick, either. Well, there was that one time when she'd eaten six centipedes and spent the next twenty-four hours a shuddering ball of misery (she'd been _so_ hungry…), but then she'd been okay, so it wasn't like she'd been _really_ sick. She didn't know what the inside of a hospital really looked like, but the outside certainly looked official enough. It was a tan building, with fancy automatic doors that almost reminded her of the ones in the Tower. Behind the parking lot, wooden skeleton beams stretched ominously towards the sky; they must have been adding a new wing or something. There was a lot of dirt amidst the construction, and that reassured her. Earth meant safety, not screwing up. And Terra didn't want to screw up. Not while _he_ was watching.

The parking lot just _looked_ complicated. More 'one way' signs than she could count, intimidating arrows pointing in all directions, paths weaving in and out of one another in a maze of asphalt. Times like these made Terra glad that she didn't have her driver's license yet (more than once, Robin had told her how fortunate it was for everybody _else_ that she didn't). The parking lot wasn't something Terra would ever want to navigate. It also looked decidedly not-in-trouble.

"The area certainly does not _seem _dangerous," Starfire remarked, floating serenely over a parked car.

Beast Boy rolled his eyes. "It's always the way: we haul tail out here, and it's a false alarm." His hand found Terra's and she felt a lot less nervous about the situation.

"Shut _up._ It's _not_ a false alarm," said Raven, right behind Terra, the words sharp like daggers against her back. Okay, even if Terra did agree with her, she could be a little less rude. A lot less. And she was always kind of mean, but this felt different, didn't feel like the friendly-mean Terra had finally started to recognize.

Cyborg sent Raven a strange look, but then seemed to let it go. "She's right; scanners say there's definitely something unwelcome here. Stay alert. I'm going to inspect the north wing—Beast Boy and Raven, with me. Starfire and Terra, check the construction site."

"But why can't I go with Terra?" Beast Boy whined, clinging to her in a way that was almost comical.

"What you just did? That's why." Cyborg shook his head with an amused grin. "Terra, go with Starfire."

Terra reluctantly detached herself from Beast Boy and followed Starfire to the construction site. She was glad to check the area with the giant sand pile; sand was her favorite and was so easy to use. There was a lot of grass behind the hospital, and the soil underneath was alright but the grass got in her way, made it harder to concentrate. You had to reach below it, imagine yourself picking it up and turning it over but only with your brain…

"I don't see anything, do you?" asked Terra, craning her neck to squint up at Starfire.

Starfire lowered herself to the pavement, red hair falling gracefully against her shoulders (oh, Terra wanted her hair—thick, beautiful and never out of place). "Not presently, no," she whispered pointedly, indicating that Terra should also be quiet. "But I have a feeling that friend Raven was correct."

_Of course she was: 'friend Raven' is _always_ 'correct.' _Except for today, because she seemed…well, preoccupied, somehow. Terra pushed the thought away. She liked hanging out with Starfire: last week, nobody wanted to watch the movie that she wanted to see, so Terra watched it with her. They had braided each other's hair and sampled Tamaranian desserts; Starfire had seemed so excited to finally find someone who genuinely appreciated her cooking.

Terra wasn't going to worry about Raven, not anymore.

"You wanna go look behind the cement truck, or should I?" Terra asked absently, wondering if they could get this done soon so then maybe they could go out to lunch.

But Starfire wasn't looking at her. Green eyes were firmly fixated on something behind Terra, and it must have been something bad because her face looked pale (and for Starfire, that was seriously pale). "I…somehow do not think that will be necessary," she murmured with forced composure.

Terra turned around, more than sure that she didn't really want to know what it was, and came face to face with a bad science fiction movie. Because what seemed like a million copies of Slade were staring her down, looking very deadly. Well. Okay, maybe not a million: but a hundred, or maybe fifty. Her brain nearly shut down as she tried to figure out how that could be sorted out.

Oh. Oh, yeah. The robots. She'd seen them a few times, when she'd lived with Slade, and once she had even fought them, at the very beginning, before any of this had happened. That wasn't fun. They were like a nest of spiders, grabbing at her everywhere and she couldn't get rid of them all…Terra swallowed with difficulty and reminded herself that Slade had promised not to hurt her.

Terra drove down the sticky fear and pressed the appropriate button on her communicator. "Umm, Cy? I think we found the problem."

"No, _we_ found the problem!" His voice, infused with static. "It's big and ugly and it talks too much. Slade's over here, so we could really use…oh. _Oh._"

"But Cyborg! It's not just Slade: he's brought his whole robot army, the ones that look like him that we fought in the mine, remember? And there's, like, a hundred of them and I just wanted to tell you that they're attacking…"

"Oh, good, 'cos I never would have noticed otherwise," he interrupted grimly, indicating that he had probably also found the robots. "We're surrounded. Girls, see if you can…"

"Hang on, we'll be right there!" Terra couldn't bear the thought of Beast Boy facing Slade alone. She knew from very personal experience how scary it was to face Slade.

And that thought kept her from cowering under the pile of sand. Terra found the courage that wasn't there, told herself for the fifteenth time that Slade had _promised_ that he wouldn't hurt her, and sprinted towards the wall of Slade-clones. Finding a better use for the sand pile than a security blanket, Terra reached for it with her mind like he'd taught her, pressing it together and hurling it in front of her with the force of a small hurricane. It made her stumble a bit, but she was okay.

Starfire was fighting low to the ground and close-range, fists clutching smoldering, neon light. Three robots attacked her at once and she could only fight off two, but Terra saw the trouble at the last second and slammed a granite slab down on the third one's head. It lay there, twitching and sparking with half-exposed electrical wires.

"Starfire, just go up higher and fry them!"

"I cannot." Perfect red hair swished from side to side. "Long range attacks would endanger the inhabitants of the facility--" She broke off to spin around and deliver a deadly blow to another robot. "And this is a place for the very ill, if I correctly comprehend its purpose."

"She's right." Cyborg, running over to her, knocking two robots to the side and dodging a third without missing a beat. "Did you all hear that?" he yelled to the others, who were right behind. "No long range attacks—and Terra, watch the earthquakes; there's people in there."

Well, she hadn't _really_ been planning on trying that…

"Where's Beast Boy; is he okay, is he alright?...oh." Terra felt particularly stupid as a green-tinted rhinoceros plowed through the wall of robots, stomping on quite a few of them along the way. But there were just so many. They could destroy them all they wanted, but there were always more…

The sun was bright and punishing on Terra's scalp, and when she looked the wrong way it temporarily blinded her, for a half-second too long. A stabbing pain bit into her side as a mechanized fist connected, and she staggered back, tripping over the curb and landing on her back with no air in her lungs.

Figures that that would be the moment when the _real_ Slade decided to notice her.

"Ah, and you must be Terra," he remarked smoothly, taking perfectly timed steps towards her.

What? Well, of _course_ she was—Oh. Right. Pretend you never met him. Terra tried to drag herself to her feet, but the pain in her side kept her down. Pretend you hate him, she reminded herself. Pretend you don't want him to… "Leave me _alone!"_ she heard herself scream, and she wondered if some of the desperation was real.

"No, Terra," he said. "No, I don't think that I will. I have, after all, been so eagerly awaiting this meeting... and I find it lives up to every expectation..." He reached for her arm, her shoulder, fingers millimeters from her hair…

"Glad you're happy, because now would be a good time to think your last thoughts." Raven hovered in the air behind Slade, voice like acid, hands shaking, a black orb of pure energy clenched between her palms. Her eyes had turned a dark, blood red…and there were four, not two. Terra shuddered. She'd never seen Raven do that, didn't think it was even possible.

"This isn't your fight, little girl." Slade turned away from Terra, his back to her, and she was glad because she didn't like pretending that they were enemies and didn't think she could keep it up. And she didn't like how his threatening expression and silky words made her feel like maybe he really _was_ her enemy.

He'd barely said the words when the energy sailed towards him. Slade dodged, but it almost hit him…and then it _really _almost hit Terra, who saw what was coming when Raven attacked and just barely managed to roll away. You couldn't hit Slade. She'd never seen _anyone_ hit Slade. But oh, Raven had almost hit _her._ And that wasn't a practice shot, either. Terra had seen Raven's powers in action enough to know the difference, and she was fighting to _kill._ Heart pounding, Terra pressed her cheek into the flower bed, breathing in the comforting scent of earth and wondering what it would be like to die.

"It's my fight as long as you're breathing, _monster." _The hatred there made Terra shudder and look away, made her look at the gaping, burning hole where six cars used to be, concrete bubbling like an open wound. But Raven didn't care, didn't care at all; she just kept talking like she didn't even see what she did. "And if I have my way, that's only a short time longer. _Azarath, metrion…"_

Apparently, Beast Boy had noticed, too: now in human form, he dodged a robot, sent it slamming into a blue convertible, and then yelled across the parking lot, "Rae! Get a grip! What is _wrong_ with you?"

Terra snapped her attention back to Raven, mostly just so she'd be aware if any more deadly attacks decided to aim for her head. She was almost afraid to look, to see that awful expression…

"What's wrong with _him _is the better question," Raven spat. The red eyes were gone, replaced by the usual violet, and at least that was a little less awful, but Terra knew better than to think everything was okay now.

Resolving to never make Raven mad _ever _again, Terra climbed shakily to her feet, just in time to see a bird land on the pavement in front of her, morphing instantly into Beast Boy.

"Isn't it way too early for you, Mr. Metal Pants?" he asked defiantly, the innocence and bravery right under his words even as he risked a glance around to make sure everyone had caught his joke. It made her feel better, just knowing that he was nearby. Because at that moment, Terra was absolutely more afraid of Raven than she was of Slade. At least Slade had promised not to hurt her.

But Slade hadn't promised not to hurt Beast Boy. Terra was reminded of this all too vividly when he grabbed him and sent him flying into a Mercedes, crushing the hood and setting off a deafening alarm. He didn't get up. Terra felt her heart stop beating.

Staring evenly at the shattered car, Slade answered the question as if he'd never been interrupted. "An invaluable opportunity was made available to me, let's say. Besides," he continued, turning his gaze on Terra. "It's a nice…change of pace."

She didn't like the way he said that, and thought that if she were smarter, she would wonder what the change of pace was and what it was a change of pace _from._ But she didn't really care, feeling nauseated as she ran towards the car, ignoring her trembling legs. A robot got between her and Beast Boy, and she tried to sidestep it but couldn't. Reaching out desperately with her powers to find something that she could manipulate, Terra found the glass from the broken windshield swirling around her face before she could stop it. She tried to direct it towards the robot but failed miserably, and the few pieces that did meet their mark only shattered instead of cutting. Breathing heavily, she managed to release her grip on the glass and call up a real weapon: the robot fell to the ground, a slab of concrete sticking through its chest.

Terra reached out helplessly to Beast Boy, not sure if touching him would make it worse. "Hey…can you see me? Can you move?"

Sprawled out on the dashboard, he made an unintelligible noise, but at least he was conscious. There was blood, but not as much as there should have been, considering that he fell through glass. Maybe the glass in cars was different and that's why she hadn't been able to control…

"Beast Boy! Beast Boy, talk to me!" The words were becoming strained and warm tears had somehow found their way down her cheeks. He had to be alright, he couldn't die, it wasn't fair, it wasn't supposed to happen this way, she hadn't _meant_ for it to happen this way, it was all Slade's fault…

A scream tore her gaze away from him (which was probably a good thing because Terra couldn't stand to look anymore—it was making her sicker). Starfire's scream. "Raven, _stop it!"_

Feet barely touching the ground, eyes murderous and cold, Raven's concentration was fixated on Slade—and he looked hurt. She wasn't touching him, but Terra knew perfectly well that Raven didn't have to touch you to kill you. It was hard to see what was happening exactly, but it seemed like his armor was getting…squeezed. It was crumpling in on him, especially around the face, slowly. And Raven wasn't stopping. Raven wasn't going to stop until…

_"Raven!"_ Cyborg sounded more afraid than Terra thought he was capable of sounding.

"Stay back," she snapped, eyes not leaving Slade's face. "This is between me and _him."_

"I do not understand, and I do not wish to understand!" Starfire was in front of her now, a hair's width away from interfering physically. Of course, Raven was so focused that it might not even have worked. "Friend, you must release him! You know that taking a life is…"

But at that moment, Starfire didn't exist in Raven's universe, and if the next words out of her mouth were any indication, she knew exactly what taking a life meant and didn't care one little bit.

"If you like this armor so much, you can _die in it."_

Terra's mouth had halfway-formed around a protest of its own accord, because as soon as Raven said the words, the idea behind them became real, and she knew that Slade couldn't die. If Slade died, _she _would die. She needed him. Needed him and wanted him and…

But it turned out that she found something else to worry about, because Raven's gaze shifted, just slightly, and Terra saw her recoil. Terra covered her mouth with her hands when she noticed, too: just outside the automatic, glass doors, a robot had pinned a sobbing teenage girl, twisting her arms behind her back. She had long, mousy hair and a goofy, striped uniform; probably a volunteer. Several other robots congregated near the entrance, more than ready to break through the doors if asked.

Raven lowered her hands and her features lost several shades of intensity, and Terra knew she'd broken her concentration. "You bast…"

It took him awhile to respond, and once he did it was so soft that Terra couldn't hear, but she could draw some pretty strong conclusions as to what it was, judging by Raven's reaction.

"I'm not an infant, freak." She glared, glancing periodically at the girl. "If I let you go, there's nothing to stop you from killing her, from killing all of them."

"Come now, Raven," said Slade, regaining his composure now as Raven took the lethal edge out of her hold. "Surely you trust me?"

A series of unidentifiable emotions flashed across Raven's face as Terra held her breath, immobile, as if one move would upset the delicate balance and bring death to everyone. Starfire and Cyborg flanked her, caught somewhere between disbelief and horror, more than ready to stop her should she make the wrong decision. Slade just stared, utterly dispassionate.

Then, Raven made a decision.

"Of course, if you kill them…there's nothing to stop _me_ from killing _you."_

But Starfire had had enough. "I apologize, Raven," she said despondently. Terra wondered for a wild moment what she was apologizing for, until a blow to the side of Raven's head sent her falling lifelessly towards the pavement. Starfire caught her under the arms, lowering her gently to the ground, jaw clenched and eyes downcast.

Terra's hands were shaking—when had that started?—as she looked from Starfire to Cyborg to the girl in the striped shirt, not even sure how to distribute her panic properly. They had _attacked_ a team member! And oh, what if Raven had brain damage or something, and she hadn't even thought about whether or not Beast Boy was okay, but at least Slade was still alive, and that awful car alarm was still blaring...and why were there explosions?

And there were explosions, all around her, all of the robots that they hadn't already destroyed; it was simultaneous and almost theatrical, punctuating the car alarm like a perverted symphony. Then, Terra heard the too-short scream, spun around to see the girl, sprawled out on the pavement covered in blood…her own blood…

Terra turned her head and vomited right into a bed of pansies.

* * *

The next thing she was aware of was Cyborg, his huge hands covering her shoulders, pulling her against him and holding her as she shook uncontrollably. She clung to him, hiding her face because she didn't want to see, didn't want to see anything ever again. Cyborg stroked her hair and told her that it was okay, that it was over and everybody was alright, but they couldn't be alright because she'd _seen,_ seen the blood and everything and oh god all that blood…

"Where is she, where is she, where is she…?" Terra repeated the words in a chant, feeling a little better every time she said them.

Cyborg released his grip on her and held her out at arms length, looking her straight in the eyes. "Where's who?"

Her teeth were chattering. "Girl…red stripes…blood…where is she…?"

"They…" Cyborg hesitated, choosing each word carefully before he said it. "They took Maureen to the emergency room, Terra. When the 'bot exploded, it hurt her real badly. But they think she's going to be okay."

Of course, she didn't know if Cyborg was just saying that to make her feel better or if Maureen would actually be okay. Terra settled on another question. "Where's Slade?" If he were dead…_oh, please god, no…_

"He escaped during the explosions." A female voice behind her, a soft hand on her back. "Terra, it is imperative that we return to the Tower with great haste. Raven and Beast Boy are damaged and in need of immediate medical attention."

Terra turned away from Starfire and risked a glance at the parking lot: the ruined, smoking cars and the shattered glass and the sand that caked that spot where she'd thrown it…well, she couldn't remember what she'd been trying to do, but she'd thrown some sand, anyway. She swayed a little, vision blurring. If this was what being a superhero was like—

Then Terra didn't want to be a superhero anymore.

The tears had just started stinging at the backs of her eyes when someone else pushed through Starfire to get to her, someone who fought Cyborg's efforts to get him to lie down again. Beast Boy's strangled cry cut through her misery and self-pity and horror, and the grip of his hands gave her something to focus on besides her reeling mind. When he kissed her, all of her, blood and dirt and vomit and everything, kissed her and didn't care about any of that, just that she was here and he was here and both of them were still breathing…Terra thought that maybe that was what love felt like.

* * *

**Note to the esteemed readers:** Up until this point, the two stories have been taking place simultaneously, chapter by chapter. In upcoming chapters, the dates will be slightly different, story-wise. The next two chapters of Bright Line take place before Cognitive Dissonance, chronologically. For this reason, the next two updates will be Bright Line only in order to keep the dates consistent. Cognitive Dissonance chapter seven will be updated with Bright Line chapter nine. No promises, but I might look into updating more often while we're "catching up." Expect something similar to happen with Cognitive Dissonance in the future; the stories will eventually even out again.

Thank you very much for your support and to those who have been enjoying the story so far. If you have any questions about the updating situation, please feel free to ask. I love hearing your thoughts.


	7. Two Wrongs Make a Right

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Seven: Two Wrongs Make a Right

* * *

**

Counter cutting into her stomach as she leaned into it, trying to keep herself from running away, Terra pressed what seemed like the millionth button on the phone, hating the maze of offices and answering machines you had to go through just to talk to a real, live person. It was like that when you tried to call any big organization, really, but the hospital was especially difficult. And the fact that she only had a first name and a striped uniform to go on didn't help.

"Umm, yeah, hi, I'm Terra," she said, jumping when a human voice finally came on the line. "I was wondering if you could tell me about Maureen, the girl who was hurt in the fight on February 20th."

She'd waited over a week to call. Several times, she'd tried to, had picked up the phone and played their little game that asked her to press 'one' if she wanted _this _and 'two' if she wanted _that._ But she always hung up, too afraid to hear an answer she didn't want to hear. Or worse, a not-answer. Terra figured that after almost ten days, they'd know one way or another, anyway.

"Are you a family member?" A friendly but unyielding female voice. "We don't release personal medical information over the phone."

"Err, no," said Terra. "I was…well, I was _there._ Because I'm one of the Teen Titans, and I was _trying_ not to let anybody get hurt—I really was trying, ma'am—and I should have called sooner but I was too scared."

"I see. I do want to tell you that…"

"But can you please, please just tell me if she's alive?" Terra felt her voice starting to rise hysterically as she gripped the counter with her free hand and thought about the stripes and the blood and the scream. "I have to know, please; I promise I won't bother her or anything, but I can't keep wondering if she's okay or not—you have to understand!"

"Terra, it's okay," said the woman. "Maureen's been discharged."

"Does that mean she's alive, or what?" Please, please not _or what._

The woman laughed. "Yes, she's alive. Sweetie, there were no casualties."

Relief flooded into every part of her. "Thank you," she breathed, closing her eyes. "And I'm sorry about your parking lot…and all the cars that got smashed up…and I'm sure somebody had to go out and clean up all that sand—I did that, and I'm sorry about it, too."

"If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be answering this phone call because I wouldn't have a place to work. We all know that you did your best. And if anyone tells you that you didn't, don't listen to them."

But the woman was wrong, because if it hadn't been for Terra, Slade probably wouldn't have attacked the hospital in the first place… "Thank you. A lot."

"If you kids ever need anything…"

Terra nodded before remembering that she was talking on the phone. "Thanks, but we're fine, I promise. I know you're busy so I'll let you go now, but…thanks. About Maureen."

An uncomfortable pause, then finally an audible sigh. "Glad I could help you. And…thank _you,_ Terra."

The words made her feel warm and bubbly, and at that moment Terra couldn't understand why she'd almost been ready to give up and run back to the desert and never set foot into the Tower again. "Oh, it was nothing," she said, feeling herself blush through her grin. "Have a nice day, ma'am."

She hung up the phone, smiling, taking a moment just to look around the kitchen at the messy dishes from dinner and the ketchup stain on the counter…and to think that she was lucky, just so lucky. Almost like somebody was taking care of her. She'd been too worried to ask about Maureen, and she'd been fine the entire time. Everyone on the team had been fine, too: Raven had woken up an hour or so after they brought her to the infirmary, and they were all relieved to discover that Beast Boy just had cuts and bruises everywhere. Terra sometimes wondered if they were invincible.

Of course, Robin was acting all funny now, and nobody really knew what to do about that, but that was okay. He'd stayed in his work room analyzing stuff for three days straight, and then suddenly stopped one night: the night that Beast Boy and Cyborg had found out about a mini golf place that had rabbits on the course, and they'd all gone to play. That had been fun (Starfire had _loved_ the rabbits…a little too much, actually…), though Terra had avoided Raven as if she had a contagious disease. After the hospital, she just didn't want to make her mad. At all. Ever.

And now, Robin _and_ Raven were acting weird. They were spending a lot more time together—alone—and both of them were a lot quieter than usual. Not that either of them talked much to begin with, but still.

It was like they were _going out,_ or something. Terra giggled. That was probably it. They would be good together: they were both boring and no fun and they both scared Terra.

Oh well; wasn't her problem, anyway. And if they really _were_ going out, maybe they'd both calm down a little and start being nicer.

Arms wrapped around her from behind. "What are _you_ doing?" Beast Boy asked playfully, face close to her ear.

"You know, just calling somebody." She put the phone on the counter and twisted around to face him, hands on his shoulders. He still had the bandage over his cheek, where the deepest cut had landed, but he wore it like a badge—and never forgot to remind everyone exactly what a dangerous situation he'd been in.

"Ohhh, I get it: you were on the phone with your _other_ boyfriend."

She swallowed with difficulty, staring hard at the ceiling and giggling—not a real laugh. "Yep…that's what I was doing, alright." Terra didn't know why she felt dishonest, because obviously she'd been talking to the woman about Maureen, and why would she think there was a sick truth to Beast Boy's joke, a hidden reality that he was unaware of—

"You wanna play some video games?" His grin told her that he had no idea that anything was wrong. And maybe he was right—because, really, what could be wrong?

"Yeah!" Terra stretched a smile over her face, but it didn't quite fit, like the pair of pants that wouldn't go over her hips this morning. She'd have to get new clothes, soon, but what would be the point if she'd just grow out of them again?

He kissed her briefly then dropped his arms from her waist, stepping away. Terra had decided that she really liked kissing: well, it was a lot better when the other person didn't taste like blood and stuff, like after the fight at the hospital. But after that morning, the awkward moments between them had stopped pretty much altogether. Obviously, they'd gotten a lot of the awkwardness behind them before he'd asked her out, so they could just skip some of it, now. But Terra had a sneaking suspicion that it was mostly _because_ of the hospital; when someone could kiss you after you'd just thrown up, you couldn't really feel embarrassed around them anymore.

"Great—and you can pick which game, 'kay?" A sly smile. "But I'm gonna tickle you if I win, just so you know."

Terra picked out one of the games that she knew he was good at.

* * *

When she told him goodnight and closed her door, Terra immediately noticed the beeping. For a wild moment, she felt sick with fear because she thought it was the communicator—she couldn't deal with another fight like the hospital, not yet, not so soon. But it wasn't the communicator, of course—Robin would have killed her if she left her communicator in her room. It was her computer, beeping insistently that she had a message.

It was a little, blinking text box in the corner of her computer screen: a handle she didn't recognize on one of her instant message clients.

_Respond._

Terra gasped and skirted around the desk to sit in her chair. She knew who that was. It could only be one person. He hadn't contacted her since the hospital, probably too busy fixing his robot army, but she'd known he would, eventually. Their last meeting had been weird. Maybe this time would be better. Heart in her throat, she typed what she hoped was an adequate answer for him. She was reminded of the time she'd pretended to be sick and met him instead of going to dinner, when he'd made her rephrase her greeting.

He asked her a few questions, ensuring that she was alone and that it was really her; Terra answered mechanically as she told her heart to shrink back to its normal size. Then, finally:

_Usual location. 2300. Take a shower first, if you wouldn't mind._

She stared at the message for a full minute, but it didn't become any clearer why he could possibly want her to do that. It did make her feel a little sick, though. As if she'd been pushed onto a rollercoaster and had only just realized that the big drop was coming up.

Leaning back in her chair, eyes closed, she wondered, not for the first time, if she was doing the right thing. Slade had done some bad, bad things. Terra thought about Maureen's blood soaking into the pavement and shuddered, opening her eyes again to keep the unwelcome images at bay. She traced a pattern along the ceiling with her eyes instead of thinking, connecting the stars with an invisible pencil. They'd given her this room. They didn't have to, but they did anyway, and what was she doing to thank them? Stealing their information and pretending to be their friend and meeting with their enemies when they weren't looking? But she _was_ their friend, she really was, so maybe that part was okay, at least. They were fun to be with and they made her feel…wholesome. She lied a lot, but she didn't lie about _that._ Especially not about Beast Boy. Terra really did like Beast Boy.

Except when she liked Slade.

Terra took a deep breath, then gathered up a change of clothes and headed for the bathroom.

* * *

Slade didn't have to explain to her what "the usual location" meant tonight; he'd told her last time that their next meeting would be at his headquarters. Which actually wasn't all that usual, but _she _wasn't going to point that out. The place was perpetually under construction, had been since Terra started living there last January. Supposedly, there had been another building before, somewhere else, but something had happened to it. Slade never said what.

It was pretty easy to find once you knew what you were looking for. There was more than one entrance, but Terra only knew about this one, in one of the caves on the outskirts of the city. She couldn't get in by herself, though. He'd be waiting there to put in the codes, like he always did. Slade didn't trust her with his codes. And anyway, there were so many to remember that Terra didn't think it would have done her much good, so maybe it wasn't really that he didn't trust her at all.

She brought the rock to the ground, slowly. Much, _much_ better. It barely made any noise when it touched the cold sand. Tonight, she actually hoped that he had seen her land, because that was some impressive control. Especially considering that her mind was elsewhere.

"No sneaking around this time?" a voice from the shadows, gently mocking.

She shook her head at the darkness, knowing full well that he was watching. "No, sir. Good evening, sir." It had long since become clear that trying to fool Slade was futile. Terra had learned to just present herself to him, out where he could see everything. It took less energy, and the result was the same in the end.

"Likewise," said Slade, outline of his mask visible in the darkness now that Terra had crossed the threshold into the cave. "Come with me; we have a lot to accomplish in a short time."

After he'd entered the security code into a hidden panel, a boulder slid back, revealing a heavy, steel door. Terra had done this hundreds of times, and she followed behind him almost casually, down a short flight of stairs and into the elevator. It was a long, awkward ride down to the base, and quickly became anything but casual. He kept staring at her in a way that made her feel funny, made her feel naked. And why had he asked her to take a shower? Terra backed into the corner of the elevator, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Without a word, he directed her past half-finished rooms and tunnels covered in debris, into a wide, open room that she'd been in many times before. They used to train in here: with him making her try her powers on every type of substance that existed in order to find out what worked and what didn't, what gave her trouble and what was easy. Hours and hours, every day, of her facing him and wondering what he would throw at her next. The big windows were what she'd always noticed. They were in almost every room, steel reinforcement beams cutting through them to make interesting, random patterns. An eerie, orange glow shone through the windows, and Terra knew there was nothing on the other side because they were underground, of course, but she supposed that even Slade had to have some kind of light where he lived. She glanced at him, wondering if this was the reason she'd been called out here: maybe he wanted her to train some more, to make sure her powers were working properly.

Sure. Train at eleven o'clock at night. And her powers were _fine._

It became clear, however, that whatever she was supposed to do, she wasn't going to be doing it here. He led her to a door on the opposite side of the room, the side closer to the windows, opened it for her so she could walk through first. Terra hesitated, looking up at him in confusion, afraid to ask.

"Don't worry, Terra. You know I'd never harm you."

And she _did_ know, so she walked through the door, trying not to cringe as she heard a lock click when he closed it. She'd never seen this place before but it looked pretty normal, and much smaller, like somebody's room: desk, drawers, closet, bed. Windows. The same windows that were in every other room. They made the whole thing look kind of like a church; Terra had never been inside a church before but she knew what stained glass looked like and…well, that's what this looked like, anyway.

People got married in churches. She knew that much.

Overall, though, the room was completely ordinary; like something she might find back at the Tower. Funny how she'd been expecting a torture chamber or something. Though the furniture strongly indicated otherwise, Terra somehow didn't think that this was _really _Slade's bedroom, because he _wouldn't_ show her that. The idea that Slade even had a bedroom was suddenly ridiculous, even though she guessed that he would _have_ to sleep somewhere, and she only just managed to fight down the laughter.

Why were they in here? Why were they in here when she'd never been in this room before and what was he going to do here that he couldn't do anywhere else and…

"You know, laminated safety glass is built to shatter on impact, rather than cutting." His words made absolutely no sense, but he was staring down at her as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

"…I…I…what?" Terra took a step away from him.

He sighed. "Your little display at the hospital. I trust you had some exceedingly clever plan involving the layer of polyvinyl butyral, yes?"

"The what?" Terra tucked her hair behind her ears, and it fell back into her face so she did it again. And again. It was hard because her hands were shaking.

"Plastic, Terra," said Slade, the disappointment cutting into her like a _real_ piece of glass, not the kind with that poly-whatever stuff. He walked toward her, and she couldn't take any more steps away because then she'd fall onto the bed, and he probably wouldn't like that. When he stood over her with that look on his face, it reminded Terra of how _big _he was—somehow she didn't think about that all the time, but he was, and it was kind of scary. "Which is precisely why you found it difficult to control the glass from the broken windshield."

Now it was clear what he was talking about, and she thought immediately of Beast Boy crashing through the Mercedes and not getting up. She felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. That had been so _mean._ "I'm sorry that I'm so dumb…but why did you do it, sir? He didn't do anything to you and…"

"He attacked first—I had to defend myself. Had to keep myself alive so I could continue to defend _you."_ Something about that didn't seem right, but when he ran his fingers through her hair, she couldn't add up the thoughts properly, and then it stopped mattering altogether and she couldn't even remember what they'd been talking about. Slade was right, that was all that counted; he was always right and it was getting hard to make her lungs work properly and she felt funny in places that she shouldn't…

Halfway into the act of twisting away from him, she found that she didn't have the resolve, so she settled on nodding fervently. "Yes, sir, you're right." Terra couldn't remember what she was agreeing to. Maybe she was agreeing to _everything._

"Indeed," said Slade. It was one of the scariest things she'd ever heard him say.

That was it. He hadn't brought her in here to talk about car windshields. And as much as she was afraid of the real reason, she had to know. Terra steeled herself and asked the question that had been on her lips since she'd gotten his message about taking a shower: "But why did you want me to come here—why here, why now, what do you need from me?"

Leaning closer to her—even closer than before—he stared at her in a way that made her want to squeeze her eyes shut, but she didn't. She couldn't. She had to look at him. "Oh, Terra," he said, one hand on her shoulder…under her jacket, and it was warm—almost hot—and she always expected his hands to be cold, somehow. "I daresay that the purpose of this meeting will become clear in due course—if it hasn't already."

The touch was intense, electric, like the first time she realized she could use rocks to fly. "I—I don't think that I…" She couldn't say any more. Lower back pressed against the bed, she swallowed with effort and gave up, gave up on trying to think about how and why and wrong and right. All ability to sort it out was gone, lost to his presence and the way he stared at her and how that made her feel; she'd just have to let him contend with the wrong and right part, had to let him do it. Slade was always right, anyway.

His breath was hot on her neck, hot like a fire poker. "Undress yourself, Terra. Unless, of course, you'd like me to do it for you."

Who was he kidding: of course she could take her clothes off by herself…wait a minute, what was she _doing?_ She looked down and realized that she'd already zipped off her jacket and chucked it onto the floor. Whatever he was going to do that involved a lack of clothing, well, it probably wasn't a good thing—but she wanted him to do it, really wanted him to, no matter what it was. That tingly feeling was back, warm and frightening. She lifted her t-shirt over her head and forgot how to breathe.

* * *

Terra kept her eyes on the windows. They made her feel better. Their soft, artificial light didn't hurt her eyes and didn't make her sick, and if she could just keep staring at it, she wouldn't have to think. She was almost able to tell herself that she was somewhere else, some_one_ else, even; maybe she could pretend to be Maureen, pretend that she was going to the hospital in her striped uniform, except the uniform wouldn't fit her because Terra was too skinny and boney and gross and anyway it had been burned up, and that was Terra's fault, too. The windows' reinforcement beams made outlines of light and dark on the floor, on the bed. She looked at them and everything was okay.

People got married in churches. People got married in churches.

He was over at the desk—probably doing work. Personally, Terra didn't see how anybody could do that; how they could possibly just go right back to whatever they were doing before, as if nothing had happened at all. Because she felt like something was wrong, something had been tampered with, torn, and that she probably shouldn't move because that would make it worse. She hurt. Everywhere. She thought that maybe even the end of her nose hurt. But mostly she hurt _there_.

Terra didn't know how much time had passed, and she didn't care. She just wanted to lay as still as possible, blanket pulled up to her chin because she didn't want him to see her. (But why did that matter? He'd seen everything.) There was a clock on the desk, but Slade's arm was blocking it, and she didn't want to try to see it because then she'd have to move—and Terra fully expected something inside of her to just _break_ altogether if she tried to move. He hadn't said a word to her, and she wished he would, because she was filling up fast with the sick suspicion that she'd been bad, that he didn't like her anymore because he wasn't talking to her.

They hadn't talked, hadn't really said much of anything but what on Earth were you supposed to _say_ afterwards? And Slade obviously knew more than she did, so if he wasn't going to talk, then Terra wouldn't say anything, either. That would make it worse. It would make everything worse.

It was hard to put a name on everything that had happened, but she knew it wasn't good. Wasn't good, or maybe it was—because it kind of _had_ been, a little bit. Terra tried to think of something, anything, that would make this okay, but all she could come up with was that movie that she'd watched with Starfire. She wanted…well, she wanted _love,_ like in the movie, but she didn't know if love was an embarrassed half-glance from Beast Boy or if it was…well…_that. _It had to be more of _that,_ though, because everyone did it and everyone talked about how great it was and that had to be the way you were supposed to love somebody.

"Terra. Your friends will be wondering where you've gotten off to." Hearing his smooth voice, Terra looked up to find him suddenly standing over her.

"But can't I…can't I at least stay here for a little bit?" Everything hurt. She wished he would hug her. Or at least hold her hand. You were supposed to do things like that, you just were.

Slade shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's simply not prudent. We wouldn't want them cognizant of what transpired tonight, would we?" He handed her clothes to her, at arms length, his preoccupied eye glancing over at the clock. He had been like that…when it happened, too, like he was putting in time at the office…she shuddered.

Too many big words. She just wanted a _hug; _that's all she wanted. "I…but…" Terra bit her lip. "Yes, sir."

He crossed his arms over his chest and waited expectantly, and Terra realized that she'd have to get up, because getting back to the Tower required movement and…_ouch._ Bad, bad idea. She muffled a cry as she forced herself to sit up, trying to keep the blanket wrapped around her for as long as possible. Slade watched her like she was one of those animals that had been tagged for experimentation; she knew there was no hiding from him, and she couldn't figure out why she even wanted to because he'd _already _seen, but her face still burned when she had to drop the blanket to pull on her clothing. She dressed as quickly as possible, but he saw anyway. When Terra stood up, pain shot through her, strong and stabbing and nauseating. _Don't puke, don't puke; he'll think you can't handle…well…_that_… _

Terra couldn't decide if she wanted him to think she could handle it or not.

She didn't know how she'd get back. She couldn't even walk, let alone use her powers. But Slade made her: he made her stagger out the door and into the big training room and down the hallway, telling her that he was sorry but it just couldn't be avoided, and Terra was glad when they finally got to the elevator because at least she didn't have to walk anymore. She leaned against the wall, hand pressed against the slick metal, fighting the urge to throw herself against Slade and cry.

But what was the point of crying? This was just the way things were: it was the _real_ secret that everybody hid from people who hadn't experienced it for themselves. The real reason nobody talked about it was that it was actually awful and it was just something you had to put up with if you wanted to make babies and stuff. If you wanted to be considered an adult. But maybe it would still be okay. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Slade _loved_ her. He wouldn't have done it if he didn't. And now that she thought about it, Terra did like being in on the secret, knowing that it was all rotten and there was nothing worth waiting for at all. She bet that none of her friends had any idea.

_I know something you don't know; I know something you don't know; I know something…_

"Are you alright, Terra?"

The cave was cold, colder than she remembered it being. Why was it so… Oh. Whoops. She'd left her jacket. Not about to ask to go back for it, she stared at the little hairs on her arms, until Slade closed the steel door behind him and it got too dark to really see properly.

She somehow got her brain to remember that it had been asked a question. "I'm fine, yeah…just tired." And she was. But she mostly just hurt.

"You most definitely could benefit from a good night's rest. I'm quite proud of you; you did well tonight." Nodding sympathetically, he unfolded one of her arms from her chest, took her hand in his. It was different from when Beast Boy held her hand. Slade's hands were huge, and how he almost-squeezed her fingers in a way that probably wasn't meant to be comforting but somehow it was, because he'd direct her where she needed to be directed…

His words reminded her of the way he hadn't talked to her, and how that made her think that she'd done something wrong. Except, Slade didn't think she'd done anything wrong, it seemed like; she couldn't hold back the smile. "Really? I was so worried, and I just didn't know…and sir, I was wondering, actually, if you don't mind telling me of course…" She faltered, unable to say the rest of it. The wrong answer would hurt more than anything else, and she just wouldn't be able to…

"Please, my dear: ask your question. I don't mind." He'd be smiling one of those not-nice smiles under the mask. Terra _still _didn't know what his face looked like. He'd kept his mask on through most of it, and then it had been too dark…and anyway, she'd had her eyes closed.

She shuffled her feet. "Well…why? Why me, why now, why…_that?" _Terra knew what answer she wanted, and if she didn't get it, she was absolutely going to cry. And then Slade would _really_ think she was worthless.

Slade dropped her hand gently so he could reach up and run his fingers through her hair. It was a mess of blonde snarls and was probably disgusting, like the rest of her—why'd he ask her to take a shower before when she really needed to take a shower after? "Oh, Terra," he said, seeming genuinely distressed. "Even now, you continue to believe that you are undesirable."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't understand," said Terra, back to staring at her shoes. One of them was untied, laces dragging in the dirt.

"Why not, is the better question," he continued. "My dear, you are quite beautiful."

Beautiful. It wasn't exactly the word she'd choose to describe herself, not ever and certainly not now, but it filled her with hope that Slade thought she was. Now this, this was okay. This was how things were supposed to be. "Umm…thank you?" She thought that maybe she should say something else, but couldn't think of what.

"Don't thank me for honesty," said Slade, twisting some of her hair around his finger.

* * *

She shut the window and shuffled over to her closet. Peeling her clothes off carefully, she stuffed them in the corner of the closet; there wasn't really any place to hide them, because Terra hadn't lived here long enough to have a suitably messy closet, but she tried to get them out of sight as much as possible. Terra didn't want to see them. They were gross, like her.

Terra tried to decide whether the idea of taking a shower was worth having to walk all the way to the bathroom. And besides, she shouldn't feel as filthy as she did, it was something wrong with her—she was supposed to have liked it, and if she let on that she hadn't everyone would _know_ there was something wrong with her--so she should just try and convince herself…

But she was _sticky._ And it was _gross._

She found some sweatpants, and a faded shirt that Beast Boy had given her. The shirt was old and soft and it smelled like him. That made her feel a little better. But not much. Wrapping one of her towels around herself, she snatched up the clothes and made her decision. She had to shower, because if she didn't then the others might find out, and oh god they could never find out. Well. A part of her was kind of proud of it, of course, but all the same, they would not be happy.

It occurred to her as she walked down the hallway, floor chilly against her bare feet, that she was walking around naked. That was a little weird, sure, but it somehow didn't matter anymore.

What Terra really wanted to do once she'd turned on the water was to scrub herself until her skin turned red all over, but even that wouldn't make her clean again, not really. No. No, she couldn't think that, because that's how _bad _people felt, and Terra hadn't been bad. Slade had told her that. She was _beautiful._ He'd _said. _

So Terra stayed in the shower just long enough. And she didn't let herself scrub, just tried not to watch the water turn pink as it ran down her legs and disappeared into the drain. Besides, wasn't it wrong to want to want to wash herself forever so she could somehow just erase…that's not how it was supposed to be; nobody ever did that in the movies or anything. Of course, maybe the movies just didn't talk about what it was really like, but now Terra knew what it was really like, and…

She pulled her clothes on, glad that she didn't have to look at herself. And when she looked down at the shirt and felt the fabric against her skin, she knew what she wanted at that moment more than anything in the world, even if it was so late that it was early and he was probably sleeping or whatever—

When she finally got to Beast Boy's door, she wasted no time in knocking. It started out cautious, but she put more force into it when she remembered that it took a national emergency to pry Beast Boy out of bed when he didn't want to be pried. "Hey—it's me—are you asleep?"

She had to try a few more times, but finally the door slid open. He squinted at her, sleepy and confused, but he got a lot more confused when Terra threw her arms around him, wet hair soaking his neck. Making an unintelligible noise, he staggered back slightly, but Terra clung to him, not even caring that she was probably scaring him out of his wits. She just wanted him to hug her, wanted somebody to tell her that she was good and clean and okay.

"Well, I'm not asleep anymore, anyway," he managed after he'd regained his balance, arms encircling her slowly and uncertainly. "Terra, what's _wrong?"_

Terra hadn't really thought about how she'd answer that. Another lie bubbled up from the pit of her stomach before she could stop it. "I—I had a bad dream, a really, really bad one…I dreamed I was back in the desert and it was so cold and I didn't have any food and I was just so lonely and I needed—needed…" The dream wasn't real, but the feelings behind it were, and the tears were coating her cheeks before she'd put conscious thought to them.

His heart was beating really fast. He didn't say anything for awhile: just held her, and that was alright because that was what she wanted, anyway. Everything _still_ hurt and she really hoped that it would stop hurting by tomorrow—somehow she doubted it—but she was safe with him, safe from all the things she couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't think about.

"Terra, it's okay; it was just a dream," he whispered into her ear, words more than a little uncertain. His fingers were touching her hair in the middle of her back, and that was nice so she tried not to think about how Slade had touched her hair, and what else Slade had touched, and…Terra cried harder.

Because it wasn't just a dream. It wasn't, and she'd never wake up from it, and Terra knew that she'd done something there was no turning away from, had taken that last step that would send her falling into something she couldn't take back. And Beast Boy's voice didn't make it go away. Couldn't make it go away.

Nothing could, not anymore.


	8. Converse Accident

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Eight: Converse Accident

* * *

**

Terra opened her eyes and wished she were dead.

Everything…_everything_ hurt. It felt like somebody had decided to reach inside of her and saw out a few of her bones. With a piece of glass or something. It was even worse than the time she'd accidentally dropped a really heavy stone on her stomach while she'd been sleeping (and that had been bad: she would have thrown up, if she'd had any food in her stomach at the time…). Terra tried to roll over onto her stomach, cringing as a sharp pain drew the breath from her lungs, pain that she couldn't put a name on, that wasn't supposed to be there—but it was there, all the same. _There._ Why—why would she hurt like that, and—

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no…oh,_ god. _

A rush of memory, realization: last night and she was safe right here, safe in her room with the painted ceiling and the pretty walls and all that, but last night she had…they had… Terra's hands were shaking before she realized it. In fact, the rest of her was shaking, too. She'd…she'd been _bad_. So bad. She'd…she couldn't even say it, but sooner or later she'd have to say it, just not yet, not yet, she couldn't, _couldn't_. Terra curled up into a ball, arranging her legs carefully in a way that didn't hurt quite so much, holding her knees because then the shaking was easier to handle, telling herself not to cry. Don't cry again.

Beast Boy had been nice to her. Eventually, she'd managed to stop crying, though he'd been worried about her going back to her room by herself. He'd even offered to come and sit by her bed until she fell asleep, but—well, even though she wanted him to be with her and hug her and tell her that everything was okay, she didn't want him in her room. By her bed. She didn't want a _boy_ in her room, not right now, not ever again. So she'd shuffled down the hallway and back to her room, alone, and didn't cry once she crawled into bed. And even now, hugging her pillow to her chest, folded up so her chin could rest on it, she realized that she couldn't cry, even if she'd wanted to. Terra didn't feel like crying. Mostly she felt dead. Mostly she wished she were dead.

She kind of deserved to be dead, maybe.

Using her palms to push herself up into a sitting position, Terra slowly swung one leg over the side of her bed, then the other. She had to move them one at a time, with her hands, biting her lip against the dull ache that turned more vicious when she tried to move. One foot after the other, she began walking around her room experimentally, cringing every time she took another step. She didn't want to move—would have rather just stayed in bed until last night a distant enough memory that she wouldn't have to look at it, wouldn't be able to see it clearly if she did look. Last night was…it was a mess of blood and pain, like Terra was, and she wanted it gone, scabbed over, not stuck in the forefront of her mind where she had to _think _about it and stuff.

But Terra had to get used to walking around. Had to relearn how to move. Because the clock on her computer said that she'd already slept past eleven o'clock, and she couldn't be acting weird when the others started wondering where she was. She had to get over this achy feeling before then. Had to get it all out right now. Before they knew.

They could never know. Never, never, _ever._

So that's why Terra made herself reach down and touch her toes, stifling a cry, palms grazing the rough carpet. She stayed like that for a few seconds, hair brushing against the floor, before she allowed herself to rise…and promptly pulled one leg behind her, grabbing her desk to keep from falling over. The mirror on her wall caught her eye and Terra wished that it hadn't. A bleary, splotchy face stared back at her, like a guilty criminal, like the ones that they sent to prison—was she just like that, now? Just as bad? Or maybe worse because most of the people they put in jail had stolen stuff, or whatever…no criminal ever did _that_. She'd heard the term, knew what it was. 'Sleeping with the enemy.' It was like _treason. _And treason-- they _killed_ people for treason.

Terra looked into the mirror, dry eyes narrowed, forced her mouth to open as she said something that she'd known ever since last night but had been afraid to put into words: "I had sex with Slade." It came out a tentative whisper, barely audible even to her own ears.

"I had sex with Slade," she pronounced, a bit more loudly. This time, it was a guilty verdict.

For some reason, she kept thinking that she should _do_ something, something official, because surely life didn't just go on exactly like always, after you'd done _that _with a person. Even just _saying_ it was something, at least. Saying it to the mirror, right out in the open where she had to look. Somehow, Terra had always thought that it would have been different. From the way that the others talked, Terra guessed that they just didn't realize. Beast Boy and Cyborg made jokes about it, sometimes, and Starfire would watch movies with her and explain what Terra didn't understand (of course, now she could explain it to Starfire, she could explain it all…). Terra would sooner bite off her own arm than ask Raven about it, and she'd never heard Robin mention it. At all. Ever. He must really not have a clue.

Well, Terra had a clue. Terra knew about sex. She knew the truth.

It was _awful._

Terra dressed without looking at herself: she squeezed her eyes shut to do it, even though it took longer because she put her shirt on backwards and then had to squirm and pull at it until it was the right way around. Being naked was so gross, even for just a few seconds. She wished that she could tattoo her clothes onto her body and never have to take them off.

She was trying to drag a comb through her hair when a knock at her door made her pull too hard and she couldn't stop the yelp of pain—which was weird because she hadn't even cried when Slade had…oh god it had hurt so much when he'd…

"You alright, babe?" For the first time that Terra could remember, Beast Boy sounded hesitant. Maybe it was the heavy door making his voice sound weird, but Terra didn't think so.

"Yep, I'm great!" She risked a final glance into the mirror, trying to only see the blonde hair as she smoothed it behind her ears, and not the guilty face. Taking a deep breath, she opened her door, smiling at him with more effort than she'd ever needed in all her life.

The look that greeted her suggested that he didn't really believe she was doing great at all, and that actually he thought she was far from great and was really worried, but he swallowed the concerned protest when Terra put her arms around him. "Thanks for helping—last night, I mean," she said quietly. "I feel way better now." It was about the millionth lie she'd told him, because Terra didn't feel better—except maybe a little, now, when he was holding her like this. When he let her go, she reluctantly stepped away. Terra wanted Beast Boy to hold her forever.

He grinned hesitantly. "That's great. Really…great." Beast Boy glanced down at his shoes. "So…do you feel better enough to come to lunch with us?"

The idea of eating food made Terra want to run back into her room and not come out of bed again for a week. And that was horrifying because Terra couldn't think of a single time in her life when she hadn't wanted food. "Sure!" She wedged a transparent smile onto the face. Why was it already time for lunch?

"Great," said Beast Boy, offering his hand to her (she clutched it a little too tightly). "Oh, guess what? We finally got Robin and Raven to go with us. 'Cos, y'know, they've decided to become allergic to sunlight." He paused. "Not like Raven wasn't _always _allergic to sunlight, but this is really weird for Robin."

"Allergic to sunlight?" Terra couldn't stop the giggle.

"If you ask me, I'm worried that her virgin blood supply is gonna run out."

Terra stumbled, her mouth dry like it had been coated with cotton.

"Woah, careful there!" He supported her with an arm around her waist, and didn't let her go when she'd regained her balance. She leaned into him, listening to her heartbeat slow as she tried to tell herself that he hadn't meant anything by it, that he didn't know that Raven would have to get her virgin blood somewhere else, because it certainly wasn't going to come from Terra.

She didn't ask him where they were going because it didn't really matter—Terra wasn't going to eat anyway.

* * *

The lights and the noise were making Terra's head hurt. It was the kind of building where even a few quiet conversations sounded a lot louder than normal, and there was a little kid screaming in the next booth, directly behind Terra. She didn't know what the boy was screaming about—maybe he just didn't like the food or something. Terra turned her face towards the wall, noticing the way the colored lighting reflected off the metal napkin dispenser. She was glad she was sitting next to the wall because then she didn't have so many people looking at her and expecting her to talk. They'd talk anyway, of course, but— 

Talking to them was impossible. Every word, every sentence—tainted with the sour fear that she'd blurt out everything, right out there for everyone to see. It was constantly on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill over if she didn't keep it in check. _Hey, Robin, I had sex with Slade last night, how was your weekend? _And she had. She did. Everything they'd done…oh, god. Terra didn't do things like that. Terra was a _good girl_.

No. No, she wasn't. Not anymore. She was different from Raven and different from Starfire or even the boys, now—she'd done something they hadn't done. She'd done a _lot _of things they hadn't done. Terra looked over at Starfire, who was sitting across from her and slowly pouring the salt and pepper onto the table, mixing them together with almost scientific interest. She was almost sure that she could tell just by looking at Starfire that she—that she _hadn't._ Terra couldn't decide if that made her feel wonderful or awful. On the one hand, the guilt, the shame, how dirty she was compared to them…but on the other, there was this horrible urge to dance around singing _'I'm better than you-uuu…"_

Terra was the youngest and the ugliest and the stupidest. But she'd lost her virginity _first_, damn it.

Could she get pregnant? She didn't know. It had something to do with bleeding at certain times—and she was pretty sure that it hadn't happened to her yet, but she had bled last night, oh god. Terra wished that he had explained more, or had at least let her stay with him after it was over. She kind of wanted to excuse herself so she could go to the bathroom and see if she was still bleeding, but she hoped she wasn't because it was _disgusting_ and…

It had been sticky. And much more invasive than she was prepared for. And it _hurt._ Terra wondered if she'd have to do it again—maybe after you did it once that was enough. It hurt and it made her feel kind of sick and it was scary. Having him inside of her scared her.

A lot.

She stared into her menu and tried not to think about it.

"Good to have a break from all the missions, finally," Cyborg commented, making Terra jump because she'd finally managed to tune out all the noise.

Raven nodded from across the table (Terra had sat as far away from her as possible…and Raven was sitting next to Robin, which was what Terra had expected, of course). "Yeah. Quiet is good."

"Uh huh, 'specially after you went all four-eyes at the hospital," said Beast Boy. He reached under the table to hold Terra's hand.

"I _don't_ want to talk about that."

"Will someone _please_ tell me what happened at the hospital?" The worry was thick in Robin's voice, even though Cyborg had already told him about a million times that nobody had gotten hurt and nothing bad had happened. Robin just wanted to know everything. Like always.

Beast Boy yawned, playing with his fork with his free hand. "Like we said: Slade screwed us through the floor big time, that's what happened."

Terra had been looking at Beast Boy so she didn't see it, but the sound of a glass being toppled over made her jerk her head around to stare at Robin, who was watching in shock as the rapidly forming puddle of water spread across the table. He didn't look upset, exactly, more disbelieving…though it was hard to tell with the mask. Terra wondered if his eyes were green. That would match his uniform.

Beast Boy made a few strangled attempts at speaking, cut off by constricting laughter, but finally managed to say, "Alright, that's one thing I never thought I'd see. Y'know, I don't think you're well enough to fight yet—your reflexes are still out to lunch." He collapsed into giggles again.

Raven swore, reached over Starfire to yank a fistful of napkins out of the dispenser and started cleaning up the mess. She said something to Robin that was too soft for Terra to hear, then turned to glare at Beast Boy. "You—shut up."

"Might I assist you?" asked Starfire, staring wide-eyed at the mess.

Raven looked like she was going to say something else, but then the waitress was taking over the cleaning with a towel as Starfire tried to help, and whatever she'd been going to say probably wasn't very nice, so it was just as well. Robin made a move to pick up some of the ice but Raven touched his hand and he stopped. She said something else to him—Terra didn't hear what. Picking up the glass in a swift, easy motion, the waitress announced that her name was Lisa, that it was alright about the water and that she'd be happy to take their orders if they were ready.

When it was her turn, Terra shook her head and tried to explain that she wasn't hungry.

"But, babe, you've gotta eat _something!"_

So Terra pointed wordlessly to the first item on the menu that her eyes fell on and hoped that Beast Boy wouldn't make her eat it.

Lisa brought Robin another glass of water. He didn't thank her but Raven did. Had she started _talking_ for him, too? Awkward silence fell over the table but Terra didn't really mind because she just wanted to try to think about things. To think about _those_ things. Well, it was silent except for Robin coughing. Terra thought he had to be faking it or whatever—nobody stayed sick for that long.

"Umm…so, Raven?" Beast Boy began just as the silence was starting to become too much for even Terra. "Anything going on in your life that you'd like to share?"

"No," said Raven, staring straight at him, which meant that she was almost staring at Terra, who was immediately reminded of those four, blood-red eyes and the sizzling, smoking concrete…and what else Raven could probably do with those awful powers if she wanted to…

Beast Boy sighed. "Oh, right! You're allergic to talking—sorry, I forgot!"

"Why am I suddenly so interesting?" Raven snapped. "Talk to your girlfriend. Or Starfire. Or Cyborg. Think you can handle that?"

"Please, friend Beast Boy, I do not believe that Raven currently wishes to engage in—"

Beast Boy nudged Terra meaningfully. "Think she's been missing out on the virgin blood lately, right?"

Terra shuddered and scooted away from him until she was pressed against the wall. She really, really wished he wouldn't say that. Because twenty-four hours ago, Terra had been a virgin, but now she wasn't and it had to be something that people could _see,_ some kind of mark and you could tell just by looking…Terra distracted herself by noticing how quiet Robin had become, not like Cyborg who chuckled uncomfortably and Starfire who wanted to know if Raven "truthfully consumed such foul substances." He was staring into the table, head bent, and she thought that his hands were shaking a little. Maybe she'd imagined it. Maybe.

Raven glanced over at Robin with concern before responding, turning to glare at Beast Boy. "You were dropped on your head at birth, weren't you?"

"He _was?" _

"No, Starfire." She sighed. "Beast Boy. Stop trying to be funny. It's not working."

Beast Boy pointed his fork at her. "That's it, though, that's your problem. You never think anything's funny. You don't ever want any of us to have fun. I can kinda see why you've been hanging out with angst whore over there so much lately. Y'know, I'd almost…"

He didn't get to say the rest.

"Shut up, Beast Boy. Shut the _hell_ up." It was like she was ripping off a little piece of him with every word she spoke. "I don't know when you got your graduate's degree in offensive behavior, but it's going to stop." She paused, glaring. "Immediately."

He blinked at Terra, probably because he was too afraid to blink at Raven. "I…uhh…offensive?" His eyes were absolutely shocked but all Terra could do was giggle nervously, because he had called Robin a whore but _Terra_ was the whore, wasn't she? No, no she couldn't be, couldn't, Slade loved her, she was beautiful, he'd _said_…

Raven ignored Beast Boy, as if the exchange had never happened, turning calmly to the side so Terra couldn't see her face. "Robin, you've got water all over your shirt—you'd better clean up. Your immune system's not at full yet."

Robin didn't answer for a long time, and his breathing was shallower than it was supposed to be. When he finally did manage to say something, he didn't get very far. "It's…"

"Robin," she said softly, then waited for him to look at her, and added, "please." Normally, Raven didn't say very much. So to hear her interrupting everyone like this was just freaky—and Robin never tolerated being interrupted.

Except when he did. Except when he bit his lip and stared down at the table for a few seconds and then nodded, rising wordlessly and setting some bills on the table without looking at what they were. He muttered something about keeping the change and walked away slowly, more than a little aimlessly. And Robin was _never_ aimless. He never did _anything_ without a specific goal in mind. Maybe he was going to the bathroom to get towels or something, but it just didn't seem that way. Something else was going on, something bigger than the spilled water—something that might actually be linked to the spilled water, now that she thought about it. Why was Raven making him leave…and why was he listening to her when Robin never listened to _anybody?_ Something just didn't make—

That was it, then. They were _totally_ going out.

Everyone else looked totally confused, except for Raven, who mostly just looked like she wanted to telekinetically rip out Beast Boy's heart. With his ribcage and everything. Terra scooted a little closer to the wall, trying to look insignificant. Behind her, she felt the little kid pulling her hair, then poking her neck with tiny, sticky fingers. Terra didn't protest. Terra wasn't very good at protesting.

"Raven, y'know…" Cyborg shifted uncomfortably. "Are you alright? Because that was…"

"Impolite?" guessed Starfire.

"Tell _him_ to stop being impolite, and maybe I will, too," said Raven.

"Just tell him what the problem was, okay? He doesn't understand; _none_ of us understand," said Cyborg. "We can't fix it if we don't know what's wrong."

Raven stared down into her lap, shoulders rising and falling with deliberation, and Terra recognized her carefully controlled relaxation because she remembered that one day when Raven had taught her how to meditate—but why would Raven need to mediate about this? When she looked up again, Terra half expected to see the red eyes, too many eyes for one face, angry and heartless and empty.

But they were just Raven's eyes, thankfully, just violet and intelligent and—well, they were still angry, but not Angry. "What's wrong is that I'm tired of this immature, inconsiderate…" She closed her eyes briefly and took a few deep breaths. "I need to go. I have a headache."

Starfire grabbed her arm and tugged when she tried to rise. "But please, Friend Raven! Might you merely explain to us what caused you to become so troubled?"

When Starfire touched her, Raven flinched visibly and Terra could have sworn that she saw her physically withdraw into herself, just like she'd told Terra to do that one day before they'd fought Cinderblock.

"Star, she has a _headache._ Let her go," said Cyborg, and he was right. You were always supposed to leave Raven alone when she had headaches and you weren't supposed to ask questions, either. Starfire nodded reluctantly and released her.

Lisa, the waitress, seemed very surprised to see Raven brush unceremoniously past her—and Raven didn't even looking back to apologize when she nearly caused the food to splatter onto the floor. Not like Terra would have really been all that sad. She still didn't want to eat anything. Lisa seemed even more surprised to find that there were four people at the table now, not six, but she just set the plates down, didn't stare too much at the empty seats, and told them cheerfully that if they needed anything else, she would be around.

Luckily, Raven's outburst gave the rest of the table something else to talk about besides the fact that Terra wasn't eating, and it wasn't hard for her to push her food around on her plate so they wouldn't suspect. She hid some of it under her napkin and destroyed some more with about six gallons of ketchup. Nobody noticed. They were too busy discussing Raven and her "permanent PMS," and then awkwardly explaining to Starfire what that was.

But Terra just spent the rest of the meal thinking, trying not to get too much of a headache from the noise and the blinking overhead lights. (And even if she did have one, it would just be a normal headache, not like one of Raven's—those usually meant that something was about to explode.) As she dragged her fork around the edge of her plate in swirling patterns, she wondered if maybe she'd been wrong about Robin. He'd gotten so quiet when Beast Boy had…

_Oh. _

And then, Terra knew exactly why Robin had gotten upset, why he'd knocked the glass over, and maybe even why Raven had yelled. Beast Boy didn't mean anything by the virgin blood joke but it had upset Terra because Terra _knew_…and it hadn't upset anybody else. Except Robin. It was so obvious. Why hadn't she seen it before? Robin must _know._ He had to know. There was just nothing else that could explain the shaking and the silence. And Raven had gotten mad…so did she know firsthand or because Robin had told her?

Terra stared into her crushed up mess of tacos drowning in a lake full of ketchup, clinging to hope. Maybe it wasn't _always_ like that. Maybe it had just been like that for Terra because she didn't know how and she was bad at it. And if anyone could tell her the truth, it was Robin. He _knew_. She could ask Raven, she supposed, and to anyone else it probably would have seemed like a better idea because Raven was a girl…but Robin knew _everything_ and his eyes didn't go blood red when he got mad. He would be better to ask. When she'd asked him about Slade, she hadn't liked the answer but at least he'd given a good, smart one—and he didn't yell at her or anything. But not right now. Terra had learned her lesson about asking Robin about important stuff at the wrong time. She'd wait till he was happier. And she'd definitely wait until Raven wasn't around; if she caught Terra asking her _boyfriend_ about sex…

Suddenly needing to be touched, Terra shivered and leaned closer to Beast Boy, resting her head against his shoulder. She closed her eyes and concentrated on how nice he smelled and how safe this was, how he'd never hurt her—and she wondered how long it would be before he _wanted to,_ before he'd ask, before he'd do it anyway even if she told him it wouldn't be good. Before he did it anyway.

Like Slade had.

* * *

**Note to the esteemed readers:** **Please bear with me in the coming weeks, as I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep the weekly pace of updating due to real life getting in my way. Also, the next two updates will be Cognitive Dissonance only, due to differences in the timeline (CD9 and CD10 take place before BL11). CD11 and BL11 will be out at the same time. Thank you very much for all your support so far! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I love hearing from you all.**


	9. Middle Ground

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Nine: Middle Ground

* * *

**

Sometimes when you lose things they'll turn up if you just let life go on and don't think about them too much. Usually when you least expect it. Once, Cyborg lost his toothbrush and found it in the refrigerator. Turned out that Beast Boy had just put it there as a prank. Sometimes, things worked out and you didn't have to interfere.

This was not one of those times.

Terra was missing her gloves. Luckily, they hadn't had any fights since the last time she had them, so she hadn't realized until tonight, when she'd remembered on a whim that she hadn't worn them in a long time. After…well, everything that had happened, Terra didn't remember stuff like that so well. It didn't seem to matter.

But she _liked _her gloves. And she would _need _them if they had to fight somebody. She'd need them to—Terra wasn't exactly sure what they were for, actually, but they were important, anyway. And Terra knew exactly where they were, too.

That stupid Bunny Golf.

It was fun at the time, even when Starfire stunned the bunnies and they had to leave, because that had been hilarious. Really, it had been one of their better evenings, with almost no silly arguments. Even Robin and Raven had fun. Probably. Terra figured that there was something wrong with you if you couldn't enjoy yourself when there were a million cute bunnies around.

In any case, Terra had taken her gloves off to play, and she could remember setting them down on a bench beside hole number three, and she wanted them back.

It was already late. Starfire had just gone to sleep, leaving Terra alone on the couch with Beast Boy, paying much more attention to his arm around her shoulders than she was to the cartoon on the screen. For some reason, Terra kind of wished Starfire had stayed. They didn't hang out enough, and besides, she would feel much better to be able to talk to another _girl,_ even if she couldn't talk about _that._ And, well, she wouldn't talk to Raven because Terra would like to keep breathing. She wondered if Raven would find out about her conversation with Robin.

That conversation…had not gone well. Robin never really answered her, just kept saying over and over that she was too young. Whether Terra was too young to worry about it, too young to ask questions, or too young to _do_ it, she wasn't sure. Probably too young for any of that. Then, he'd _had _to bring up Beast Boy and pressure and "unacceptable behavior," which was just mean because Beast Boy really hadn't said anything about it…though Terra knew he would, eventually, because weren't you supposed to, when you loved somebody?

"Why does it _matter_ if it hurts if you aren't planning to do it any time soon?" he'd asked, and there had been something in his voice that meant he knew something that he wasn't telling Terra. Then, Robin had started asking too many questions, like why Terra wanted to ask him and not Raven or Starfire, and why she was asking in the first place—and Terra had worried that she'd run out of answers, would run out of lies, so she'd had to stop and pretend that Robin believed he'd fixed everything.

Even when he hadn't. Even when Terra was still wondering six hours after their talk, wondering what Beast Boy meant by the arm around her shoulders and wishing that Starfire would come back because she had super strength and Terra wasn't sure why that mattered, but if anything _happened,_ she could…

Right. Her gloves. Bunny Golf would be closing soon and she needed to get there tonight.

She shrugged off Beast Boy's arm and stood, squeezing a smile across her face like the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. "Hey, I have something I need to take care of—I'll be back in thirty minutes, okay?" That would give her enough time.

"Wait, woah, it's almost ten. What's happening that late that can't wait till tomorrow?" He looked up at her, confused, attention wandering from the television.

"It's no big deal, I just need to go get something that I forgot; I'll be back soon, really," said Terra as she moved toward the door.

"But Ter-_ruh,"_ he whined. "You've gotta tell me where you're going, at least; Robin'll kill me if I let you leave by yourself at night when nobody knows where you are!"

Terra rolled her eyes. "You guys are so over-protective." It really was almost funny, given all the times Terra had been outside _past midnight _when nobody but _Slade_ knew, though it occurred to her that this would be the first time she was out alone since…since March 2nd. Since the Bad Thing that happened on March 2nd.

Beast Boy climbed over the back of the couch to stand next to Terra, taking her hands. "Seriously, babe, tell me where you're going," he said.

Part of her wanted to squirm away and leave without telling, but then she had that cold, slippery thought again, about how this was her first time out alone _since,_ and that idea made her open her mouth and say the words. "I forgot my gloves at Bunny Golf, and I really need to get them back, so I need to go now, before they close, 'cos it's already been a long time and maybe they have them in the lost and found—anyway, I'll be back in thirty minutes."

"Great, now was that so hard?" He grinned and released her hands, kissing her on the cheek before he stepped away. "You sure you don't need any help looking for them?"

She shook her head, hair swishing. "Nope, I can handle it." She had to handle it because if she didn't, it would mean that she could never be a good, whole person again. She wasn't sure why it would mean that, but it would.

Beast Boy looked a bit doubtful but then waved, crawling back over the couch to adjust the volume on the television. "Alrighty! If you're not back in thirty minutes, I'm coming to rescue you!"

"Can't wait," she said, moving through the doorway and down the hall until the sounds of whatever cartoon he was watching faded entirely. Rescuing sounded nice, actually. She wanted Beast Boy to rescue her from _everything._

As she leaned against the wall of the elevator, Terra wondered if she was glad that Beast Boy had let her go alone or if she'd just started lying to _herself,_ on top of everybody else she lied to.

* * *

Bunny Golf closed at ten. Just perfect. 

Fifteen minutes too late, but there were still a few people around, probably the employees, cleaning up and all that. You entered the golf course through an arcade, whose doors were currently locked, but a teenager in a blue uniform was close enough to the door to see her and wave, setting down his vacuum to walk over to Terra. He looked around nervously (he was probably going to be in a lot of trouble) before unlocking the door and pushing it open.

"Hi," he said, in a voice that was just a little too friendly.

Terra hugged her chest, trying to hide. "Umm, hi. I just…I was wondering if I could check the lost and found for something."

The boy glanced over his shoulder. "Well, I'm not supposed to…" He turned back to Terra, and the apologetic expression told her that he was about to say no, but then some realization dawned on his face. "Hey! Oh, wow, you're Terra from the Teen Titans, aren't you?"

"Umm…"

"It was so awesome what you guys did at the hospital. My mom works there; I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come. Of course you can come in—can I help you with something?" He opened the door wider and Terra stepped into the arcade. The machines seemed strange, silent and dead without all the blinking lights and yellow tickets.

"I think I can handle it," she said, trying to stay as far away from the boy as she could without being rude.

"Lost and found is just outside, by the go karts. My name's Josh. What are you looking for?"

Terra indicated her hands as if that would explain everything. "I left my gloves when me and my friends were here awhile back. I was just hoping that you'd still have them."

Josh led her outside past a few picnic tables and the mini golf area, and Terra looked up at the floodlights, which were currently being invaded by moths. She was mostly looking so she wouldn't have to look at Josh. He was tall and smiled too much and she kept wondering what he was thinking about. "Well, I don't remember seeing any gloves, but hey, if you can't find them, I can maybe get you some new ones. I have to close, but if you hang around for fifteen more minutes or so we can take my car and…"

Terra's heart settled somewhere between her stomach and her shoes. "No, no, that's okay, I really just wanted to find _these _gloves and if I can't find them, that's really okay, it's not the end of the world, y'know, so I think I'll just look for myself and I'll let you get back to your vacuuming or whatever because—anyway, I'll just go look."

"Hey, that's cool," said Josh, though his smile faded somewhat and he didn't stand quite so close. Which was a good thing. "You're sure you don't need anything else?"

"Yep, positive!"

"Okay, I'll be inside if you change your mind." He winked at her. "You're my favorite, you know."

"Umm…thanks?" Terra fought the urge to throw up. She was already somebody's favorite—two somebodies', actually—and she was still trying to figure out if that was a good thing; she really didn't think she could handle adding a third.

Finally, finally Josh left her to walk the rest of the way by herself—and it was longer than she'd expected. Bunny Golf's main attraction was obviously the bunnies, but there was also a go kart track further away. The place wasn't exactly deserted, but it was pretty far away from the golf course and the arcade and the employees in blue uniforms. Terra had never been on a go kart before—they'd had to leave too quickly to try it last time—and was pretty sure she wouldn't be very good at it, but this course looked simple enough. It was a small figure-eight, brightly colored cars held in the station with blocks of wood between the wheels. Lights were placed around the general area but it was pretty clear that this was mostly a daytime activity. Terra had to get very close to the station before she saw what she was looking for, a simple, plastic box under an awning, marked _Lost and Found._ Dropping to her knees, she dug through the contents—watches, wallets, various prizes that probably came from the arcade, a shoe without a mate, an unholy number of t-shirts (Terra wondered how many people were walking around without their shirts on), a book about microbiology or macrobiology or something like that… No gloves.

Well, she supposed she shouldn't be all that surprised. She'd left them here for so long, in the rain and with tons of people coming every day and all that, and probably some little kid had picked them up, or maybe one of the bunnies had dragged them off to make a nest. Actually, Terra could live with it if that's what had happened. The image of a little rabbit making a nest out of her gloves made her smile, and maybe there were baby rabbits and of course they'd need a place to sleep and stuff. In any case, the gloves weren't here, and she needed to get back before Beast Boy came after her. Because he probably _would._

Not wanting to have to face creepy Josh and his promised car ride, Terra decided that she'd just get herself over the fence and back home without even going back through the arcade. Besides, if she ran into him, she couldn't even lie and say she found the gloves because he'd _see _that she didn't, and then he'd probably never leave her alone.

"Looking for these?"

Out of the corner of her eye, a big hand dangled a pair of familiar brown gloves over her shoulder, and Terra's world stopped spinning.

She jerked away from them as if they were two spiders crawling on her, spinning around and backing away instinctively until she had her back pressed into the ticket booth, looking up at Slade. It wasn't real, he wasn't here, how could he be here, he just couldn't be. But he was. He was the monster hiding in her closet that somehow always knew when she wasn't really sleeping.

No. No, it was okay. Slade loved her: he wasn't here to hurt her (except that he already _had_), and she was wrong to be afraid. And yet…the way his eye stared down at her, filled with…_something_…Terra didn't really think that was love. She didn't think it was love at all. Maybe she was wrong because she was stupid, but she really, really didn't think so.

"I was only trying to help, you know," he said, sounding almost hurt. "You seemed extremely distressed about the loss of your gloves, but if you don't want them anymore…" He trailed off deliberately, waiting for her to respond.

Terra didn't want to take the gloves because that meant getting closer to him and besides, his _hands _had been on them and everything, but she swallowed her fear and leaned over enough so she could reach out and take them. Slade let the gloves fall to the ground, not actually handing them to her, and she just managed to catch them, scooting back and hugging them to her chest as if they could protect her.

"What do you want?" she managed, staring hard at his boots as she pulled her gloves on and prayed that he didn't want what she thought he might want.

"Now, that's not a very cooperative tone of voice, is it?" Slade took a step closer. "Why don't you try that again."

It was not a suggestion.

"What…what do I need to do, sir?" She tried to make her voice sound cooperative like he wanted but figured that it mostly just sounded terrified. But that turned out to be okay because Slade liked terrified almost as much as he liked cooperative.

"Much better," he said. "I've missed you a great deal during our time apart, my dear, but determined that perhaps you needed some time to yourself…to think. Now, you seem more than capable of continuing our business—and these two weeks have proved very lonely indeed." He stepped forward again, closing the small distance between them to pat the top of her head, and then didn't take his hand away, moved it to her cheek.

Terra squirmed out of his reach, head bumping against the rail of the fence. "I—we—this isn't—not—and…" She squeezed her eyes shut, stuck on something she needed to say but couldn't.

"If time allowed, I would no doubt enjoy immensely you interpreting that marvel of gibberish, Terra. I don't believe I've ever heard any quite as ... incomprehensible." Sighing heavily, Slade stepped away again, but not far enough so that Terra's heartbeat returned to normal. "But unfortunately, there's work to be done." Then, Terra noticed that he was holding something—how long he'd had it, she didn't know, but he drew it to her attention, nodding to the innocuous plastic bag in his right hand. "I have a present for you. Or, more accurately, I have a present for your happy little red-headed friend."

_Starfire._ And Terra knew enough of Slade to know that this wasn't the kind of present that she would like. She didn't respond, because if you didn't have anything productive to say to Slade, he didn't want to hear it. So she just waited, and let the sickness and dread and terror seep into her veins, running through every part of her, pressing familiar buttons that she'd rather not have pressed.

"It's quite a simple task, really." He dangled the plastic bag in her face like a ball of string for a kitten. Terra could see that there was something in it, a small amount of white powder, and, though it looked like so much flour, for some reason it seemed…sinister. "All you need to do is ensure that Starfire ingests the contents of this bag within the next twenty-four hours. Do take care that it does not come in contact with your mouth, nose or eyes. I daresay that you would not like the results."

"But how do I make sure Starfire gets it?" She felt stupid as soon as she said it, but had needed to ask a question.

"Use your imagination," he said sardonically. "You might, for example, pour it into one of the foul concoctions she so adores, tell her it's a rare and coveted food that can only be found on Earth, or stir it into her meal on your night to cook—"

"But I don't cook; Cyborg does. And anyway, the only thing I can make is sandwiches—"

"Your lack of culinary skills is irrelevant to my request, Terra." His voice was terse, short: a sure sign of his patience wearing thin. "I do not know how you should best go about administering the contents of this bag to Starfire and I do not care. The fact of the matter is that there will be serious consequences if you fail to carry out this request." Slade lowered himself to her level, forcibly opening her fingers and pressing the bag into her hand, closing her fist around it. "Do we understand each other?"

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"…What's this gonna do to Starfire?"

It was the question she'd been afraid to ask, so afraid that she'd covered it up with stupid questions. Terra squeezed the bag tightly between her fingers. And even before Slade spoke, she knew she was going to get the answer that she didn't want. "Terra. Does it really matter what it will do to Starfire?"

And Terra was suddenly bombarded with a thousand afternoons on the couch, laughing at movies and explaining board games and talking about boys, the images bubbling up inside of her, into a place where she couldn't ignore them, and suddenly she knew exactly what the flour stuff was going to do to Starfire, and she couldn't do that, she just couldn't, no matter how much Slade wouldn't like it. Because Terra wasn't very good at right and wrong—it was easier to just let Slade or Robin worry about things like that—but she knew, right then, right in her heart, that that was _wrong,_ and bad, and that good girls didn't do stuff like that. This, she realized, was a moment, a fork in the road like the dusty not-paths she'd followed in the desert, and whichever one she chose, it would be too hot and dry and exhausting to go back and change her mind. She had two choices. And only one of them would make it possible for her to ever be good again.

So Terra took the bag and threw it in Slade's face.

It didn't turn out quite the way she was hoping.

The bag's seal must have broken in her hands, because most of the flour stuff spilled out as she threw it, spilled right into Slade's _face_ and she _hadn't _meant for that to happen. But it did, and though the mask probably protected him from most things like that, his eye was still exposed and he jerked violently away from the bag. Terra had never seen him actually afraid of anything in her life, but he was afraid of this, and that alone told her that she couldn't give it to Starfire, no matter what. That thought played itself over and over in her head, the only thing she was sure of as Slade stared down at the bag and the powder on the pavement, breathing hard. For a moment, he didn't move, just looked at it, not paying attention to Terra at all, the floodlights illuminating the flour stuff like a giant highlighter. Then, he started paying attention to Terra.

He started paying attention to Terra in the form of his foot connecting with her ribcage.

Almost too shocked to feel the pain, Terra didn't make a sound, telling herself over and over that she just couldn't hurt Starfire, she would be _bad _to hurt Starfire, and she was on her feet before she realized, whimpering and clutching her side and backing away from him.

"I'm sorry!" she screamed, looking around for help and really starting to wish that she hadn't sent Josh away.

"You will be." And then he was holding that big stick, the one that immediately made her realize just how right he was and just how sorry she was about to be.

Terra took one backwards step too many, caught her legs on a guardrail and tumbled onto the go kart track, landing flat on her back with a sickening _thud_. She knew what was going to happen—Slade's deliberate steps spoke as clearly as his clipped voice ever did. He was going to make her sorry: sorry for disobeying and disappointing and being—doing—

Sorry for doing what was _right._ Anything that didn't involve killing Starfire was what was right. It was simple and perfect and easy, and Terra thought that maybe she finally understood what the world looked like to Robin: this was probably how he saw things all the time, but in this one moment it made sense to her, too. And Terra wouldn't be sorry for doing the right thing. He could never make her sorry, no matter how much he was going to hurt her. There was still so much, so many things she didn't understand and couldn't explain, but for this thing, this one thing, there was an answer.

_I won't hurt Starfire. I won't hurt Starfire, I won't, I won't, won't, won't, won't…_

Before she was aware of really thinking about it, a three foot slab of concrete was between her and Slade, ripped out of the track and leaving an awful hole just in front of the station. Terra stared at it for about half a second trying to figure out when she'd given it permission to appear, and then bolted, fighting the pain in her back from where she'd fallen because she would be in a lot more pain if Slade got her. Now she guessed that maybe he just wanted to _get _her, take her back to his headquarters, and she didn't want to know what he might do to her there so she kept running. She was fast but Slade was faster, and finally she had to turn around, looking straight into the nightmare she'd found herself in, reacting before she had time to think about the consequences.

The concrete rippled and cracked under her command, squashing itself into a misshapen, gray mountain that was even taller than Slade and kept him out of view. Terra stared at it wide-eyed, breathing hard, almost unable to believe she'd really done it, without even having to try too much. It was a good idea until she realized that now she had no idea where Slade was.

Terra wondered if the employees would come save her. But no, they probably wouldn't. Josh was leaving soon, and he was closing—they were all gone, she bet. At least nobody was around to get mad at her for messing up their go kart track.

Behind her, out of thin air, something grabbed her arm and twisted, forcing Terra to turn around and look up at _him_. He held her there for a moment, silently glaring down at her as if he were thinking about all the things he could possibly say to come up with the meanest one. "I truly thought you were better than this, Terra. You got what you wanted, and now you resort to belligerence, hostility and attempts on my life." Armored fingers bit into the back of her forearm. "Is this your way of telling me that you do not value our _partnership?"_

Maybe she did and maybe she didn't and maybe Slade's hand was just hurting her a whole lot, but Terra vehemently shook her head. "No, no, that's not it, I totally do, I'm sorry, I'll be good, I swear I will, it's just that…you wanted me to…_hurt _Starfire, didn't you? Like, _kill _her." She looked away at the sagging go kart track and bent guardrails. "And I can't. I shouldn't. And I can't."

"That," said Slade, "is a most admirable quality."

Terra's eyes jerked back to his face, frozen there in shock. "A-admirable?"

He nodded solemnly. "Indeed. Even more admirable, in fact, when the ones you are trying to protect would not show you the same courtesy."

"Huh?"

"I shouldn't think it need be any more apparent exactly how much the Titans do not value your life, Terra," said Slade.

That wasn't true. _Wasn't._ "They do so! They care about me!"

"Do they? None of them seemed terribly eager to assist you during our confrontation at the hospital. Luckily, I meant you no harm; otherwise, the consequences could have been dire. Robin, as I recall, did not see fit to even make an appearance that day."

"He was sick!"

Slade paused to move her closer to the concrete wall she'd created, leaving her less room to escape. "I see. Just as sick as you were the day you skipped dinner to visit me?"

It was wrong, it was, that couldn't be the way things really were—could it? Why was it that when she was at home, safe with her friends, what they said to her made sense and their motives were just as she thought they were, but when Slade was around, he…he made them _change,_ made everything different, turned on its head so many times she didn't know how it had looked originally…

"I…I know it looks bad but it's not like that, it's not!"

"It's alright, my dear. I had feared that being forced to live in such company would confuse you in this way." Without releasing her arm, he ran his free hand across her neck and shoulder. "Perhaps we simply need to be together for a time, so you can reacquaint yourself with reality. Would you like that?"

Terra thought about how she'd felt when he'd kicked her, decided that she would most certainly not like that at all, thank you very much, and had opened her mouth to say so when somebody else interrupted her.

"Hey! Freak of nature! Let her _go!"_

Terra prayed that Beast Boy was too far away to hear what they'd been talking about. He didn't wait for a response, just transformed into a hawk and was right in front of them in seconds, reverting to human form and glaring at Slade. Terra didn't have a watch but she figured it was well past ten thirty; he had kept his promise and come to rescue her.

"Okay, I don't know why you're here, but whatever you're trying to do is a _bad plan._"

"Is it?" Slade asked casually.

"Get away!" She screamed it before she realized what she was saying. Even though she was glad Beast Boy was here and wanted him to save her, something inside of her made her say it, because…he needed to get away, needed to get away from _her._ There was something—poisonous, about Terra. She'd been caught in something and couldn't get out, and nothing would save her, not even Beast Boy's defiant look and unshakable bravery.

He shook his head. Forcefully. "No way; I'm not leaving you with that creep! _Let her go, _Slade. I'm not gonna ask you again."

"How precious," said Slade. "Your valor is charming, but I'm afraid that you do not have the authority to be issuing threats."

"Wanna tell me why not?"

"Because…" He paused, deliberately trailing off, and the silence was almost lulling until Slade's hand tightened around Terra's right arm. It was kind of like the time that Cyborg had taken her blood pressure, except way worse. She tried not to make a sound. "I believe I have some leverage in this matter. Make a move to fight, and I'm afraid there will be consequences." He yanked Terra around in front of him, holding her tightly, though Terra wasn't stupid enough to try and get away. She was really close to him, back of her head pressed into his chest. Cringing, she listened to her heart beat faster and faster.

Beast Boy's face registered no recognition whatsoever, only fury, and his eyes were locked on Terra's as she prayed he'd just listen. But he didn't. "Leverage _this!"_ And an instant later, there was a cheetah where he'd been standing, and the huge claws looked like they'd really hurt stuck into her chest, and Terra tried to squirm out of Slade's grip but he held her easily and—

White hot pain tore through Terra's arm and she couldn't see anything, wasn't aware of anything but pain, and god what had happened, she had no idea, something awful, her legs stopped working and she halfway sank to the floor before Slade caught her and hauled her to her feet, holding her up by her wrist—oh, no, touching that was _bad, _and now she was aware enough to scream because she just wanted Slade to let her go, just don't touch her arm oh god it hurt so much…

_"Terra!"_

Beast Boy was back in human form: he had been something else before, a tiger, or a lion like in that movie that she'd watched with Starfire about the wizard and the shoes and, god, she wanted the shoes and to be able to just say 'There's no place like home,' and to be there, but maybe they wouldn't work, because she wasn't sure what home was, and he— Wait, why was he… Oh. Oh yeah, that's right. He turned into animals sometimes. Her arm hurt. For some reason, Beast Boy was staring at her in horror, seeming afraid to get any closer or to back away or do anything at all, really. And she was screaming and crying and her arm hurt.

"A pity." Slade's deep voice behind her, his hands under her arms. "Perhaps next time you will be just slightly more intelligent. Now, I believe I'll need you to resume your position over by the ticket booth, or I will be forced to begin breaking this poor girl's bones."

He hadn't already _started?_ Oh god.

"I—you little—" Beast Boy didn't move at first, stuck on a decision that seemed ridiculously easy to Terra, because Slade could have told her to do just about anything at that moment and she would have been happy about it if only it would make the pain stop. Then, Slade prodded her arm unceremoniously with one finger and Terra screamed again and Beast Boy ran to the ticket booth, backwards, eyes on Terra the whole way. "Stop it, I did what you wanted, okay, just leave her alone, let her go!"

Terra felt herself moving, realizing that she was being dragged with Slade, away from the floodlights and the ruined go kart track and Beast Boy and safety. The only thing that kept the panic from boiling over was Slade's controlled voice whispering in her ear. "You know how it pains me to harm you, but no misbehavior goes unpunished, I'm afraid. I trust you will remember this the next time you are asked to perform a simple task. We will be in contact, and you _will _do as I ask." He still held her in front of him like a shield, with Beast Boy watching nervously as if weighing his options.

"If you don't drop her right now, you can forget that thing about me not attacking you."

She felt a low chuckle send shivers down her neck. "Remember who your real protector is." A gentle finger ghosting over her hurt arm. And then, raising his voice, "Drop her? That seems like a reasonable bargain."

He gripped Terra around her ribcage and half shoved, half threw her into the dirt, with her face landing inches away from the guardrail. An exhausted sigh oozed out of her, and she dropped her head into a little clump of clover and dried up leaves.

The ground felt nice and soft, compared to all the times she'd fallen on the concrete that evening, and Terra just lay there for awhile, breathing in and out and staring hard at a dandelion, thinking that maybe she'd try to count how many seeds it had. A hand on her back interrupted her at seventeen.

"Are you dead? Please, _please _don't be dead."

Terra groaned, smiling just a little bit. "I hope not."

"Can you sit up?" Beast Boy was on the other side of her, away from the dandelion, so Terra couldn't see him.

Sleeping out here sounded okay—she could keep her arm still, at least. "I don't really wanna."

"I think you should, please, for me? I'll help." Avoiding the arm that felt like it was on fire, Beast Boy gently pulled her into a sitting position, and then moved around to sit right in front of her, two hands on her shoulders. "You okay?"

"No."

He reached up and touched her cheek. "What happened, babe? What did Slade do to you?"

Terra fought down the nausea and shook her head, breaking eye contact and staring at her arm. "I don't—I can't talk about that right now. My arm…"

"Oh, man, lemme see that…"

"No!" Terra loved Beast Boy, but she also _knew _Beast Boy and he was about as careful as a three year old who'd been given permanent markers and an invitation to draw on the walls. "I, umm, think Cyborg needs to see it. I think maybe it's broken or something. 'Cos Beast Boy?"

"Yeah?"

"It really, really, _really _hurts."

He squeezed her good hand. "It'll be okay, babe. We'll go get Cy."

As she walked shakily past the ticket booth, Terra looked down and remembered what she'd thrown there, and thought that she should wash her shoes and Beast Boy's as soon as she could. Because whatever she'd spilled had scared Slade.

Whatever she'd spilled that she'd almost used to kill Starfire.

To _murder _Starfire.


	10. Special Pleading

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Ten: Special Pleading

* * *

**

"It's a mild sprain."

Well. Terra didn't find anything "mild" about how much it hurt, that was for sure. She'd heard of sprains: Robin had sprained his ankle in one of their earlier fights. The next day, he was running on it. So basically, either Robin was more immune to pain than Superman, or Cyborg was wrong and that wasn't really what happened to Terra.

Perched on a cot in the infirmary, Terra shifted doubtfully as he stepped back. "You're _sure?" _she asked, swinging her legs back and forth. When Beast Boy had helped her drag herself back to the Tower, yelling for Cyborg to come and help her, Terra's arm had hurt so much that she was starting to think that chopping it off might help. But now it wasn't nearly so bad; it was amazing what painkillers could do.

Cyborg nodded. "Nothing broken, but we need to get the rest of you cleaned up." He indicated her torn, bloody clothing. "You said you got thrown onto concrete?"

"No, I got thrown onto _grass;_ I did the concrete thing all on my own."

"Fair enough," said Cyborg. He looked just a little uncomfortable. "Look, umm, we should immobilize your arm, but you also need to get out of those clothes." He turned away, opened a drawer under her cot, and placed a bundle of clothing into her good hand. "I'm gonna make sure you don't hurt yourself by moving your arm, and then we'll leave so you can get dressed, alright?" The 'we' included Beast Boy, who was hovering next to her on the edge of the cot, one hand resting in the middle of her back.

Terra nodded slowly, cringing when Cyborg took a pair of scissors and began to cut her sleeve open. Even with painkillers, it still hurt to have him touch it, and plus she kept trying to tell herself that Cyborg didn't _mean_ anything by it, but it didn't quite work. It _hurt, _and _he_ was hurting her, and even though he was doing it to help her, it _hurt._ And somehow, the rubber gloves made it worse, like he didn't want to touch her. Like he knew. He let go as soon as her arm was inside her shirt and at her side.

"I think you can handle the rest by yourself; try to keep your arm still. We'll throw your old clothes away—no, don't worry about that; not a big deal." He headed toward the door, motioning for Beast Boy to follow. "Back in five minutes."

Terra watched them go, waited till they were all the way out of the room before she started wondering how she'd change clothes with one hand, and how getting a shirt _on_ would be any easier than taking it _off_ without cutting it. Five minutes, several failed attempts to get her shirt over her head, and more than one frustrated groan later, she was wearing gray sweatpants and a sleeveless, blue shirt that was too big for her (it kind of looked like something Raven might sleep in).

"You alright?" Beast Boy demanded as he burst through the door.

"Hey again," said Cyborg, knocking on the doorframe as he entered and sending Beast Boy a pointed look.

"Hi," said Terra around a yawn, pulling the shirt up from where the right strap had started to slide off her shoulder. She indicated the ball of wadded up, bloody clothing, which she'd shoved over to the foot of the cot. "What are you gonna do with this?"

"Toss it," said Cyborg cheerfully, raking the whole thing into an official-looking bag. "And now we're gonna keep your arm from running away from you."

"I don't think it's going anywhere." Beast Boy glanced over at Terra's arm, which was currently a nasty shade of dull purple. If it kept swelling like this, she might eventually end up with at least one normal-sized arm. It was just too bad she wouldn't actually be able to _use_ it for anything.

Cyborg laughed as he finished wrapping a bandage around her arm, one that was heavy and kind of tight. "All the same, I'm not taking any chances. Now be a good little grass stain and bring me one of those ice packs." He turned to Terra, continuing seriously as he bandaged the worst of her cuts from where she'd fallen. "You need to rest, keep that arm immobile, and ice it every four hours to stop the swelling. Tomorrow, we'll see what Raven can do for it, but I don't want to make promises she can't keep." He took a small, white bag from Beast Boy and settled it on top of her bandaged arm, Terra gasping when the cold hit her. "I'll be back in twenty minutes to take this off."

"'Kay," said Terra.

"You okay to get some rest?"

"But what about Sl—"

Cyborg's hand on her shoulder, now glove-free, stopped her. "Terra, let's worry about you right now, and then we'll worry about him. You can tell us the full story later—Beast Boy will fill me in while you're sleeping."

"But—" Cyborg was too nice, he cared about her too much, and he didn't even know what she'd almost _done; _it was wrong, sick, evil…

"Do you need more drugs?" he asked pointedly, indicating that he was finished discussing what happened with Slade.

"Uh uh." The painkillers she'd taken had been in pill form; anything stronger would probably mean a needle, and needles were worse than an arm that kind of ached a little. Besides, the ice was helping.

"Fair enough. C'mon, Beast Boy, let's leave her alone."

Beast Boy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Finally, he leaned over and kissed Terra's cheek before helping her lie down (at Cyborg's instructions, he put some pillows under her arm, because it needed to stay elevated, or whatever). "Hope you get better real soon." He pulled the covers over her and squeezed her good hand before following Cyborg, the lights dimming automatically as they left.

"If you need anything, press the button beside your bed," said Cyborg. "G'night, kiddo." Then he reached over and flipped some switch and the infirmary went completely dark.

* * *

Terra couldn't figure out what the flowers were doing in her face. She'd smelled them even before she forced her eyes open, but when she finally did look she realized they were white and yellow and lying right next to her pillow. The leaves tickled her nose when she moved to sit up.

Two days after Beast Boy half-dragged her back to the Tower with Terra trying not to cry, she felt much better. Raven had had a lot to do with it; Cyborg had told her what happened and Terra had looked up that next morning to see her sitting by her bed, eyes closed, not responding when Terra tried to talk to her. It had felt strange. A million little prickly things under her skin, untangling the pain like a ball of string and folding it back where it belonged. Terra had drifted in and out of sleep while Raven did it, and the next thing she was aware of was a dark bruise where the bandage and the swelling had been. She'd never seen Raven heal anyone before and had been surprised with how…involved it was—and Terra had been expecting that her arm would be magically good as new (Raven had rolled her eyes and asked when was the last time _Terra_ had tried to heal a sprained wrist with her mind).

It had been nice of Raven. But Raven wouldn't _ever _be nice if Raven knew half of what Terra had done, or how she'd gotten the sprain in the first place, or…Raven wouldn't be nice at _all._ In fact, Terra was starting to think that none of them would be very nice to her if they knew. Maybe Beast Boy. Because he loved her, and wasn't love supposed to conquer all? She'd told them the story, or half of it, about how she'd lost her gloves and gone to Bunny Golf to find them, and Slade had attacked her and threatened her and scared her, but she said that she had no idea why he'd been there—even though she _did,_ obviously. Cyborg had assured her that he would tell Robin and that they would figure it out (though she'd cringed at the idea of telling Robin anything that had to do with Slade).

Terra would have prayed that Robin never figured it out, but that seemed kind of like praying that the sun wouldn't rise.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

Her room was dark, and she jumped when Beast Boy's voice dragged her out of her worries, because she'd really thought she was alone. "Oh! Hi!" It took a lot of effort not to recoil when she saw how close he was sitting, because he was a boy, and she didn't want a _boy_ in her _room._ She stared down at the daisies and tried to smile. "Are these…"

"Yep, for you." He grinned. "I wanted to get you a get well present, even though I guess Raven kind of healed you, y'know, but I was really worried and I just thought I'd—"

"I love them," said Terra. She picked up the daisies, wrapped in pink cellophane like the bouquets they sold at grocery stores (probably where he got them, actually, because Terra really didn't think Beast Boy could arrange flowers and she couldn't imagine him thinking to buy pink cellophane).

He shifted, kind of like he wanted to kiss her, but Terra didn't want him to do that while she was sitting in her _bed,_ so she scooted away from him.

"I should go put them in some water," she said brightly, trying to distract him.

He was instantly concerned. "No, no, _I_ should," he insisted. "Your arm's still all bruised and I don't want you to hurt yourself."

Terra sighed, wondering if he really thought that a bouquet was heavy enough to hurt her. She'd started lifting weights in the gym, and Robin even trusted her enough to do it by herself, now. As long as she promised not to touch the big ones. He'd made her train almost every day, and she was tons stronger already, so even with her hurt wrist she could probably lift more than she could have before.

They probably would have argued for a long time over whether or not Terra was healthy enough to put the flowers in a vase had Starfire not entered the room tentatively, with her hair pulled into a dark red braid, looking hopeful but hesitant.

"Really, I swear that I can—oh, hey, Starfire." Terra waved with her bruised hand, noticing Starfire's sympathetic wince. Cyborg had removed the bandage last night, saying that that would help the bruise heal faster, but Terra thought that it mostly just let everybody see how hideous it was.

Starfire took a few steps closer. "Are you feeling better, friend?"

Terra nodded. _"Way_ better. In fact, I'm bored, and I wish that _certain people_ would let me out of this bed." She cast a deliberate look at Beast Boy, sticking out her tongue.

"That is actually what I have come to speak with you about," said Starfire, and Terra felt a jolt of nervousness run through her. Lately, anyone mentioning that they had to talk to Terra about something made her feel like she'd finally been caught, that everything was about to come crashing down around her. Fortunately that wasn't what Starfire wanted to say. "I would very much like for you to accompany me to the mall of shopping today, if you are healthy enough."

Terra felt her stomach plummet through several floors of the Tower. That was almost worse than being caught. Because if she got caught, she wouldn't have to just smile and stare back easily at Starfire and tell her that sure, she'd love to go shopping with somebody that she'd almost _murdered_ last night. It was impossible, but she had to do it anyway. So Terra made her head nod up and down against its will, shoving a grin onto her face. "Sure! I'd love to!"

"No _way,_ Terra, you're too weak to be going to the mall!"

_"Beast Boy…" _

"But…but what if you get tired and pass out and there's nobody there to save you?"

"Beast Boy, if Terra should need assistance, I would be most capable of providing it," said Starfire.

"Yeah, see? It'll be fine." Terra stood up, though she was careful to avoid bumping her arm on anything, wriggling away from Beast Boy when he tried to stop her. Every instinct in Terra's head told her that going to the mall with Starfire would just make it worse, only, she _did _want to go—she just wanted to go in a different universe, one where she was a good girl and Slade didn't exist, or was maybe locked up in jail somewhere, except he wasn't _really_ bad, so he shouldn't go to jail, and yet he _was,_ and god… "It'll be fine," she repeated, looking into Starfire's eyes for a kind of reassurance that she couldn't offer, that nobody could offer.

"I'm gonna regret this," muttered Beast Boy.

"You are most welcome to join us, of course," said Starfire, a hint of a mischievous smile fading as soon as you tried to look for it. "No doubt that you would be quite interested in visiting the place where Victoria has secrets…"

He paled. "I'm…gonna go wash my brain out now. Kay?"

* * *

You didn't go shopping with people you'd almost killed. You just didn't.

It was wrong. It was sick. Some kind of horrific film playing over and over that Terra couldn't stop, as Starfire tried on hat after brightly colored hat. It hadn't taken long to figure out that Starfire was fascinated by random things from Earth (after much cajoling and halfway into _The Princess Diaries,_ she'd finally convinced Terra to try drinking mustard…actually, it wasn't half bad, in small amounts) and she really liked hats. The concept of matching was still beyond her, and it always seemed as if she managed to find the wildest ones imaginable, but when you were tall and beautiful enough you could make anything look like a fashion statement.

"Terra, do you prefer the blue one or the yellow one?" She twirled around in front of the full length mirror, stopping in front of Terra with both hats on her head.

"Yellow, definitely," said Terra. The yellow one didn't have as many sequins. Terra went back to her task of finding some clothes that fit. She was too big for everything in her closet. After being subjected to humiliating weekly weigh-ins and subsequently gaining fifteen pounds, Terra had been pronounced healthy and Robin had stopped obsessing over her diet. Before, she'd gotten all her clothing at charities or abandoned in lost and found bins, things that were meant for little kids—at least she didn't have to shop in the kids' department now. It was kind of strange to be bigger—stronger—and it made her feel just a little bit more like Starfire and Raven and all the other _normal_ girls in the world. Well, Raven and Starfire weren't normal—Starfire wasn't even _human, _and Raven wasn't exactly a normal girl. But whatever. That wasn't the point.

They left the store some time later: Starfire with the yellow hat and three bracelets, Terra clutching a bag full of clothes in sizes that she never thought she'd be able to wear.

"May I ask you a question?" She was startled to hear Starfire speak so suddenly, and it occurred to her that the girl had been uncharacteristically quiet for the entire trip.

Terra shuddered as if injected with liquid fear. She didn't like questions anymore, especially not questions that seemed very serious. "Sure," she said, but she wasn't at all sure and really wanted to go back to talking about bracelets.

"I asked you to accompany me in part because I wished to ask you some questions. Things have been…different, lately." She cast a disinterested glance into a window to see what was on sale before continuing. "It seems as if something—no, something _has _happened, and it troubles me because…" She broke off, shaking her head, searching for words. "I—I do not think…"

"Look, whatever you're going to say about me, just give me a second to explain, okay, I swear it's not what it looks like," she pleaded, words spilling over faster and faster as she felt herself losing control, having to stop and take deep breaths and ground herself like Slade had taught her—then feeling sick because she was using Slade's techniques to help her stay in control. Starfire knew-- she'd figured it out; Terra was in so much trouble…

Starfire's confused expression mitigated her panic somewhat. "Explain? I am confused as to your meaning, since I had meant to inquire about Robin."

Terra shifted, bouncing the shopping bag against her knees and pretending to be very interested in a guy in a kiosk selling chocolate bars. She forced a laugh. "Oh, right, Robin! I'm just stupid, don't worry, just ignore me."

Tapping her on the shoulder so Terra would look at her, Starfire bit her lip. "And I had thought that only Robin exhibited the paranoia." But the lines on her forehead melted away, and she let the matter drop, returning to the subject and leaving whatever she was going to say about Terra safely unspoken, where it belonged. "I have hardly seen him in weeks, he avoids all unnecessary conversation, and I have not seen him this…_devoted_ to his work since—" She shook her head. "Truthfully, I miss his company greatly but that is less important. I feel that there is something seriously wrong with him."

"Yeah, he's too smart." Terra giggled.

"This is not funny, Terra."

"Sorry," she said, sidestepping a little kid with a balloon. "But why ask me? Why not ask Raven, since they're, like…" She wanted to finish that sentence, but something in Starfire's eyes told her that she shouldn't, so Terra closed her mouth and stared at the little kid, who was now balancing on a bench with his hand in a potted plant.

"I did," said Starfire, and at that moment her attention was taken by a display of blue jeans in one of the store windows. Only Terra didn't think it really could be, because Starfire _hated_ jeans. She'd always said they restricted her movement. "She told me that the matter was none of my concern, and, furthermore, that she had the headaches and did not wish to be disturbed. But, Terra…" And when Terra looked back at her, Starfire just seemed so…_worried._ "I fear that the matter _is _of my concern. I fear that it is of all of our concerns. I fear that…" She trailed off and didn't say any more.

"Well, he hasn't said anything to me, if that's what you wanted to know." Terra really didn't think there was anything wrong with Robin because he hadn't been acting any weirder than he always acted, and besides, she wanted to steer the conversation into safer territory. Like bracelets. Bracelets were good. But she couldn't just avoid it, not when Starfire was so upset. "I could ask him, if you—"

"No, that will not be necessary, thank you. Terra…" Starfire stopped walking, making Terra stop in turn, and she saw the uncertainty and the doubt and the fear as an almost physical entity, like something dusty clinging to Starfire's hair. "Do you ever get the sense that…"

"That what, Starfire?"

"That something very terrible is about to happen?"

_Not unless I _do _something very terrible. _

Terra didn't get a chance to answer, though, because when she opened her mouth to say something that hopefully wouldn't incriminate her, she realized that Starfire wasn't looking at her. Following her gaze, she noticed a blond girl in a pink tube top and white pants that were far too tight, a scowl on her face and shoulder-length hair pulled back with a heart-shaped, sparkly clip. She looked frighteningly like Terra, actually, except Terra was pretty sure that she didn't look _this_ sour on a regular basis. A giant trash bag was perched near the girl as she bent over a bench, scraping chewing gum off the handrails.

Wondering what was so special about this girl, Terra waved a cautious hand in front of Starfire's face. "Umm, who's that?"

From the look on Starfire's face, you might as well have told her that she'd just won ten million dollars and a fabulous new car. At least she'd been distracted from whatever about Robin was worrying her. She took a few steps closer until she was in earshot of the girl. "Oh, her name is _Kitten."_ The way she said it sounded like one of the Tamaranian swear words that Starfire said sometimes when she was very angry. "In the past, she was found guilty of some _very bad things_. It seems that she is currently getting the just desserts, however." Starfire raised her voice slightly, giving Kitten a friendly smile that Terra suspected was not at all friendly. "Hello, Kitten! Did you have a productive stay in prison?"

Kitten looked up from her gum scraping expedition, staring at Starfire for one horrified moment before sticking out her tongue. "Community. Service." She kicked her trash bag and paused to readjust her tube top. "Ugh. I guess they wanted to punish me even more by sending_ losers _to bother me." She looked down her nose at Terra, sneering. "Who're you?"

"Err…Terra?"

"You could really use an eyebrow waxing, you know," she commented easily, turning back to Starfire with a wicked smile. "Hey, how's Robbie—"

The rest of Kitten's sentence sounded a bit like what Cyborg had sounded like the time that Beast Boy had emptied an entire bottle of mustard into his soda. Because the little kid with the balloon apparently decided that now would be a good time to throw up. Worse, he apparently decided that the perfect place to throw up was on Kitten's high-heeled shoes.

"Oh dear, that does seem most unpleasant," Starfire murmured, though the delighted grin on her face suggested that she found it anything but unpleasant. Terra thought it _was_ unpleasant. Especially the smell, which was making Terra's stomach behave uneasily, and she looked away from the mess, swallowing heavily. "I do hope that you shall find a solution. For now, we bit you farewell—best of luck with the service of the community!"

"I—I—you—my _daddy _bought me these shoes—they cost six hundred dollars in France—this is _all your fault!"_

Terra felt kind of bad about leaving, even though the smell was making her sick, but Starfire grabbed her hand in an insistent grip, and you couldn't get away from Starfire once she decided she was dragging you along. Plus, the whole thing was kind of gross anyway, and Terra wasn't sure if she really wanted to help. Or even if she _could_ if she did want to.

And anyway, Starfire didn't really seem all that distressed. As in, she didn't seem distressed at all.

"Hey, Starfire, what _was _that all about?"

An interesting bounce accentuated each of Starfire's steps—she was almost flying but not really. "Kitten was a very bad girl who most fortunately got exactly what she deserved."

Something about the whole conversation bothered Terra as she looked down at the daises planted in the flower beds outside the mall. Like the ones that Beast Boy had given her. "But, she's just a kid, like us."

Starfire shrugged. "Her age does not excuse her. I am quite pleased at the circumstances in which she has found herself."

And Terra just nodded because she couldn't think of a good answer, not with the daises sneering up at her like some kind of guilty conscience, not with Starfire's righteous, effortless tone of voice, not with the image of Kitten's tiny frame and blonde hair stamped into her memory. She was bad. She was young, but she was still bad, and she got what she deserved, and maybe she didn't mean it, maybe she had a reason, but none of that mattered to Starfire.

Terra couldn't remember if she was thinking about Kitten or herself, but when this was all over she was pretty sure that she'd end up with more problems than vomit on her shoes.


	11. Accident

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Eleven: Accident

* * *

**

"Kenzie, _stop it!"_

"No-oh," sang the girl with the stick. She was innocently pretty: freckles dotting her nose and red highlights in her dark brown pigtails. And she was poking an anthill.

The boy at her side was younger, probably her brother, brown eyes panicked as he pulled ineffectually at her arm. "You're gonna hurt them, McKenzie, and anyway they'll crawl all over the place, and it'll be gross."

McKenzie smirked. "You don't like gross? I do."

Terra edged away from them, the idea of ants crawling all over her really not very appealing. Not like she wasn't used to bugs (she'd been chased by ones that were bigger than McKenzie), but these were new pants, and besides, she was on a _date._ Who let little kids do stuff like that at restaurants, anyway? Well, okay, they were outside the restaurant, but still. Terra wasn't a huge fan of little kids. Their hands were always sticky.

Beast Boy kind of looked like maybe he wanted to join McKenzie in poking the anthill, but settled on opening the door for Terra. The little kids' high pitched voices faded as a blast of air conditioning hit her (it was already hot, especially this early in the evening), and the last thing Terra heard was something about how the boy was going to "go tell" on McKenzie if she didn't stop. The hostess realized who they were and only looked a little bit shocked as she showed them to a table, one with a good view.

They did this all the time. It was normal. It was okay.

Except when it wasn't.

It wasn't okay because this wasn't any ordinary date, wasn't any ordinary evening. It was the last evening before Terra's life exploded. Because Terra had planned this. She'd asked him, the whole thing was her idea, because she figured that it would be a good way to break the news. After all, everybody else was distracted because it was Robin's birthday or whatever, so at least this way she'd only have to deal with Beast Boy, and maybe by the time he decided to let the others know, he wouldn't be mad anymore and maybe he'd be on her side.

Cyborg had given them an odd look when Terra announced where they were going and when, but she promised him that they'd be back early. And anyway, Robin looked absolutely miserable, so the best way to be nice to him was probably to pretend that it wasn't really his birthday. He seemed to hate it whenever anybody tried to actually be _nice _to him. In fact, Terra had been almost surprised to hear the word "birthday" connected with "Robin." He was one of those people that seemed so much better than everybody else that you wondered if he even had things like birthdays. Because Terra already knew that he didn't sleep unless somebody made him, didn't eat unless he had to, didn't waste time, didn't waste words… And a birthday suggested a birth, which meant that there was a time when Robin had been a _child,_ and that just didn't seem possible.

She shuddered. He was going to be really mad when he found out.

It took Terra a few seconds to realize that Beast Boy was looking at her expectantly—he must have asked her something, or maybe the waiter had asked her something, but they were both staring at her now, so Terra just nodded and murmured, "Water's fine." Luckily, that seemed to have been the right guess. "And can I have some lemons, please?"

_I think you'd be the better judge of that,_ Slade's voice slithered into her brain the minute she'd gotten the words out. _Can you?_

_Why couldn't he ever just let me talk the way I wanted…_

"Are you okay, Terra?" Beast Boy was staring at her from across the table, messing with the silverware. She was glad there was silverware. The last time they'd come to a place like this, there had just been chopsticks and she thought she'd starve before she figured out how to use them. Beast Boy had taught her, but he wasn't a very good teacher, and she'd almost wished Robin had been there, because she was pretty sure that he would have taught her right, even if he made her feel like an idiot for not already knowing. She was glad Slade hadn't been there, even though if he had been she definitely would have been good with chopsticks by the end of the meal. As it was, she'd managed to use them enough to eat, but still wasn't very good.

She yanked herself back to reality. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm great. It's…it'll be fine."

"Terra?"

"So—I can't read anything on this menu; what should I get?" Well, she couldn't exactly _read _it, because some of it seemed to be in Japanese (Chinese? What was the difference, anyway…) but she would have figured it out. The point was the she wanted Beast Boy to order for her. She couldn't figure out why. But it was important that he did, especially because Terra's life was about to explode.

It turned out that Beast Boy wasn't exactly sure about the menu, either, and it took a rather involved conversation with the waiter for him to find something that was "cruelty-free." Terra announced that she was having what he was having and pretended that she knew what she was doing, though she mostly ended up staring out the window, wondering if McKenzie had really destroyed the anthill. He hadn't really ordered for her, but maybe it was close enough. Even though she wasn't sure _why_ it needed to be close.

If Terra weren't so stupid, she would have thought of a better way to handle this than the one she'd picked. But she _was _stupid, so the only thing she could do was tell Beast Boy because Slade…well, Slade scared her, and every time Terra had to look Starfire in the face she thought about what that drug might have done to her, and what her lifeless body might have looked like. Terra had seen dead bodies before. She'd been the _cause _of dead bodies before. Crushed under a rock slide so that only a blue-tinted hand was visible. Some guy. Some guy who maybe had a job and a family and a _life _and Terra had taken all of that away…and she couldn't—wouldn't—do that again.

And Slade had tried to make her. Had whispered in her ear at Bunny Golf that he _would _make her, would make her do anything he wanted. Who knew what that would be.

Something hitting her face made Terra turn her attention back to Beast Boy, who sheepishly put his straw back in his drink. She picked up the straw paper from where it had fallen onto her blouse, and began folding it into smaller and smaller pieces, forcing a giggle when she realized that he'd probably done it to make her laugh. He was so great at making her laugh—this didn't count because Terra was upset, of course. How long before Slade asked her to…to….

They were going to be mad. They were. But maybe mad was better than dead.

After dating someone for two months, you'd think that you'd be able to avoid the horrible silence that comes with sitting across from the other person with no clue what to say, hoping that your food would arrive so you actually had something else to do that didn't involve failing at conversation. Truthfully, they usually did manage to avoid it, but Terra's mind was swimming right now, and usually they went out with the others. So she was glad when the waiter brought their food, though the relief faded somewhat when she realized that she wasn't quite sure what it was.

"So it looks…kinda like seaweed wrapped around some really grainy marshmallows…it's not gonna bite me, is it?" Terra was known for eating anything, but after her body had finally believed that her food supply wasn't liable to be taken away at any moment, she'd become a bit choosier in what she put in her mouth.

"Naw, it's sushi," he said. "Cruelty-free sushi."

Terra paused with her hand halfway to her fork. "That's not, like, raw fish or anything, right?"

He gasped extravagantly, fixing her with a scandalized look of false horror. "What do you take me for?"

"Just making sure." Terra giggled. _Oh well, it can't be weirder than Starfire's cooking._ "…Hey, this is actually pretty good."

She let awkward silence seep back into the air again, only slightly less awkward than before since now at least she had something to do with her hands. Even with Terra at a loss for words and trying not to fidget nervously in her seat, Beast Boy was absolutely, obliviously happy. It made her hands shake. And she felt her heart in her throat when she wondered again—how much longer before she was asked to do something she couldn't get out of?

_Will this be the last thing he ever eats? _

"Beast Boy?"

"So you like it, right? When you said you wanted to go out, I didn't really know where but we always eat pizza so I thought maybe something different would be better…"

"Umm…Beast Boy?"

"I mean, not like pizza isn't good or anything, but—"

_"Beast Boy!" _Her cheeks got hot when she realized how loudly she'd said it.

An invisible switch was flipped behind his eyes and they lost that harebrained, mischievous glint before you could snap your fingers. Terra never yelled at him. Ever. He had the look of someone who had just swallowed the wrong way but didn't want anybody to know it.

"I've gotta talk to you," said Terra.

He stared down at his plate. "Well, we're talking now, aren't we?"

"No, not that kind of talking," she said. Liquid fear settled into her belly.

"Oooh." Beast Boy grimaced. "You do know that the thing every guy is afraid of most in the world is to hear their girlfriend say that it's time to _talk_."

He was preparing himself for something, and it was almost-probably the exact wrong something. "Oh no, no, not _that_ kind of talking, either!" she said quickly, reaching across the table to touch his fingers. "Beast Boy, I'm not so stupid that I don't realize how lucky I am, y'know."

He blushed and looked at his plate again, though this time appeared even less interested in what was on it. "I'd say something, umm, witty, but I'm too busy being flattered."

Everything in the whole universe was perfect until she remembered why it could never be perfect, why she could never be happy, not unless she told. And she was pretty sure telling would ruin everything, too. Her throat constricted when she thought about _him_, the faceless reminder of what she was bound to. She'd never even seen what he looked like. There was something wrong about that. There was something wrong about _all _of it.

_Tell the truth, just tell the truth._ She wouldn't do it for herself, couldn't do it, but maybe, just maybe, she could do it for Beast Boy. Terra was not going to murder her boyfriend. She just wasn't. And even if it meant him not being her boyfriend anymore…well, no matter how awful it would be, it was less awful than him being dead.

_I have to do this; I've gotta. No. More. Lies._

"Babe, you okay? You've been acting kind of funny all night." His voice was jammed somewhere between embarrassed-beyond-belief and concerned-beyond-belief. He squeezed the tip of her index finger gently. "You know…you know you can tell me anything."

_Hopefully._ "I do have to tell you something." It came out in a rush of air.

"Okay, well I'm lis—"

"Not here!" She whispered it, fighting down the panic, ignoring his looks of confusion. Hopping down from her chair, she grabbed him by the hand, much more forcefully this time, dragging him behind her to the back of the restaurant. Right past their waiter who started to ask them if everything was alright but didn't get very far, past the tiny fountain with a bunch of pennies at the bottom, because she couldn't say it right out where anybody could hear. Who knew what they would do. Besides, you couldn't say Slade's name out in public. It was a curse, it was evil, it was like saying "Bloody Mary" to the bathroom mirror twelve times, you _didn't _do it…

"Terra what in the name of…okay, I am _so_ not going in there!" he yelped, twisting out of her grip and pointing accusingly at the door she had led him to.

"Oh yes you are!"

"But Terrr-ruh, that's the _girls'_ bathroom!"

"Yes, yes, and nobody's in there, and that's a good thing because nobody can hear this, Beast Boy you've gotta do this for me, please just come on…" She could feel the panic, fizzy and electric, growing and twisting and threatening to cause some serious problems. Terra couldn't remember the last time she'd had trouble with controlling her powers, but she knew enough about herself to sense when the dam was threatening to break, and if she didn't make it stop, it was probably going to look like some giant McKenzie had thought the restaurant was an ant hill.

He tapped his finger against the crook of his elbow, eyes screwed up in a very good imitation of physical pain. "Do you have any idea what the guys will say? Do you have any idea what _Raven_ will say?"

_"Please."_ She hadn't meant for that to come out as wobbly as it did.

Beast Boy sighed. "You had to pull the voice, didn't you…fine, but if I see any…girly stuff, I'm so out of there."

He opened the door with the look of a guilty grave robber and Terra gave him a strong shove to his back because he wasn't moving fast enough, scooting into the bathroom behind him after looking over her shoulder at least six times in every direction. It wasn't that she actually thought Slade was watching…okay, it was _totally _that she thought he was watching. If he could tell when Terra was eating tomato soup, he could certainly tell when she was about to betray him.

Once she had shut the door, the electricity under her skin started to fade and her body became her own again. The bathroom was small, with two stalls and an ivory sink and it smelled like cheap flowers. Somebody should really clean the mirror. It was all cloudy and had soap stains everywhere. A broom with most of its bristles missing leaned forlornly against a corner. Thankfully, the place was actually empty, but she wasn't taking chances. Terra picked up the broom and jammed it through the curved door handle, bracing it against the sink. It wouldn't stop the person she really wanted to stop, but it would keep everyone else away, at least.

Beast Boy had his eyes firmly locked on the middle of her face, determined to look at his surroundings as little as humanly possible. He fidgeted nervously as he watched her barricade the door. "Umm, here's a better way, if you want." He pulled something out of his pocket, opened the door a crack, and then closed it again with the thing beside it, squeezing it into the space right above the lock just before Terra realized that it was a penny. Beast Boy grinned. "Fourteen years of locking people out of stuff pays off."

She bit her lip and tried not to check for Slade's face in the mirror. That would be worse than Bloody Mary. Way worse.

"Ter, what is the deal? I…you…you didn't have to lock me in the girls' bathroom just to make out with me, y'know."

The corner of Terra's mouth twitched but she didn't laugh. "I have to do this quick, before I get too scared to say it. But first…you've gotta promise me something; no, you've gotta swear it—you've gotta swear on whatever is really important to you."

"Okay," he said quietly.

She started pulling at a snarl in her shirt. "…because if you hate me, that's okay, and if you want to take me to jail, I guess that's okay, too, but you've gotta promise that no matter what I say, you won't leave me here."

"Terra, I'd never…"

Clenching a trembling fist, she cut him off in that high pitched, wispy voice that you used when you would be shouting if you weren't trying to be very quiet. "_Swear_ it, Beast Boy! Swear on Cyborg, Raven, Robin, Starfire. Swear on their lives that you won't leave me here, or I can't tell you." If he wanted to take her to jail and make her do community service like Kitten, that was fine, because scraping gum and dodging vomit sounded like paradise compared to being left alone waiting for Slade to find her.

His mouth hung open slightly, not in a jaw dropping way, just as if he had forgotten to close it at some point in the conversation. Some slow, sticky seconds trickled by as he stared blankly at her, and she waited, wondering if she'd have to run. "I'm not going to leave you, that's just crazy…but really, what's the deal? It's just a restaurant…"

"Do you swear?"

"Yes, yes, I swear! What's going on? You're scaring me, Terra."

She considered. She had made him swear before, and things had gotten very messy because of it, but he had never really told: she wouldn't be here with him tonight if he had actually done it. Believing him made sense, and it was all she had left now. Either that or…the other thing. And she did _not_ want the other thing. She took a deep breath, and thought that maybe she understood why McKenzie's brother didn't want her to poke the anthill—it was so full, twisting and writhing with thousands of bodies beneath the surface, and you'd never know to look at it, but once you pressed too hard with that stick, it exploded and you could never get it back the way it was. But for better or worse, right now she was going to have to be McKenzie, so she let the words crawl out of her like a thousand black ants.

"Okay. Beast Boy, I lied to you. I lied to all of you."

"What did you lie about?" He was amazingly calm. He even stepped closer and reached for her arm, but she pushed him away.

"No, don't do that, you'll wish you didn't. I—I…I lied about everything. _Everything_," she said miserably, hair falling into her face. A thought occurred to her. "Everything except you, I didn't lie about that. I really do like you, Beast Boy, so please don't think I don't."

"Alright, I'm really confused," said Beast Boy.

She grabbed a lump of blond hair between each fist, just because she wanted something in her hands. "Slade, okay! I've…been working for…Slade." It felt like tumbling off a cliff to say it.

Beast Boy had been meaning to say something else, something that was probably reassuring and dismissive, but it never came out. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He swallowed. Three times. The name hung in the space between them, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Slade could do that. Even when he wasn't around.

And then, finally, "You're a week early for April Fool's, you know."

"But it's not, it's not April Fool's and it's not funny—oh my god, none of it's funny at all—I spied on you guys, I told him stuff, I _did stuff with him_, and I pretended to be sick 'cos he wanted me to meet him, and poor Starfire brought me soup for nothing, don't you remember…and I don't even _like _tomato soup!" Terra didn't realize she was crying until she tried to get a breath but couldn't. She didn't realize Beast Boy was holding her until she tried to take a step back but couldn't.

After awhile, the words he was saying started to make sense. "…can help you if you'll just tell me _why,_ and what about tomato soup?"

She tightened her arms around him briefly before shrugging out of his embrace, noticing that he let her go without much protest. "Forget the soup." Staring at a roll of toilet paper on the floor so she wouldn't have to look at his face, Terra made herself keep talking. "It's just what I said. I lied. I worked for him. I stole stuff from you guys and gave it to him—I did so many bad things…and I'm sorry. I am. You said you wouldn't leave me here though, you swore, please, he'll—he'd…umm…"

"What would he do?"

She had to say it all; she couldn't just pick the parts she wanted. Anthills didn't work that way. "He'd do the thing I already did and shouldn't have done but I did it anyway. 'Cos I did things with him. Bad ones. _Those _kinds of things."

His face clearly indicated that he did not believe things could possibly get any worse. "What…"

"That. I did _that."_

"Huh?"

"Sex." And for just a moment, Terra was back in her room the morning after, looking into her mirror and making herself say it out loud for the first time. "I had sex with Slade."

There were so many things on his face that she couldn't even begin to figure out what they were—she wasn't good at emotions like Raven, wasn't good at anything. "You—you—did you _want _to?"

"I don't _know!" _The tears and the panic returned full force. "I didn't, but I should have, and it was terrible—everyone says it's good but it's not, don't believe them; maybe I wasn't even supposed to tell you 'cos it's a secret, but nobody_ said_ it was a secret, but it must be or everyone wouldn't think it was good!"

"…_Terra_…"

"I…I…sorry…please…didn't mean…not supposed to…" She hiccupped. "Help me." Terra looked at the floor. Shame had a tart, pungent taste. Like blood.

Beast Boy's face seemed to twitch uncomfortably as if he were having an argument with himself, then he reached out to Terra and grabbed her hands. She hadn't even realized how badly she was shaking and didn't have the space to be embarrassed. He had a soft look in his eyes that meant he kind of wanted to hold her again, but knew that it was not a good idea. "You…are insane. _Insane_, Terra, do you understand that?"

She nodded like a toddler being told to eat her vegetables.

"And maybe I'm even more insane for even thinking of suggesting this, but I think you need help, not Slade."

"We're _not_ finished discussing what you did to _my_ friends. But I guess that can come later." He could really sound stern when he wanted to, but there was some element of sympathy in the way he held her hands. His grip wasn't like Slade's at all: she caught herself before she entertained thoughts of whose was better.

"So…what do I have to do now?"

He released her hands, crossing his arms over his chest and sighing with finality. "Tell the others."

"I can't…" One glance at his eyes stopped the protest. "…'kay. Beast Boy?"

"Yeah?"

"Am I going to be bad forever?"

He turned away, began coaxing the penny out of the door. "Let's just go tell the others, Terra."

In other words, _yes.

* * *

_

Even the hallway looked angry. At her.

It was still early enough when Beast Boy led her into the elevator, without speaking, without even looking at her. Robin hadn't cared that they'd be late, anyway, had seemed grateful that they weren't making a big deal out of it. The short walk to the living room felt like forever, and she wondered if this was what criminals felt like who were being led to their execution. But it wasn't. They couldn't execute her yet without a trial or anything, that wasn't fair; even though she was guilty, it would at least give her some time to prepare herself for it. And then the automatic door slid open too soon and she was face to face with the thing that had haunted all her nightmares for months.

"I have located the correct remote for use of the DVD player!" Well, somehow Terra hadn't expected her worst nightmares to take the form of Starfire with her head under the couch, but close enough.

"Guys? Terra has something to tell you."

"About time y'all showed up," Cyborg said cheerfully. "We were about to give up—"

"Guys," he repeated, small and solemn in front of Terra. "Seriously. This can't wait."

From the look on Robin's face, he'd heard the desperation in Beast Boy's voice before anyone else did and was out of his seat before Terra could blink, seeming almost glad to have a problem. Right. Because he was always fixing problems. Except he couldn't fix this one. Not this time. "What happened, Beast Boy?"

"It's alright, you don't have to get up." Beast Boy took Terra's hand loosely, leading her over to the couch to stare like an idiot at four confused superheroes. It certainly didn't look like a party; nobody had decorated or anything. Robin probably hadn't allowed it. Of course, the living room was about to seem _way _less like a party. "Like I said, Terra has something to tell you. All of you."

He let go of her hand but stayed next to her, a small comfort that Terra was glad for. "You guys, I…umm…I need to tell you something."

"Yes, we gathered that," said Raven, who finally convinced Robin to sit down again. Their hands were almost touching.

Sitting together on the couch like that, the four of them almost looked like some really insane version of the Brady Bunch. Terra started twisting a piece of her hair, focusing on the way it curled up around her fingers, pretended that what was about to come out of her mouth wouldn't ruin her life, tried to keep the air in her lungs because she needed it to speak. "Sorry. And umm, first of all, I'm sorry. Really, really sorry. I really do like you guys, and I didn't want to hurt you, or whatever, and I'm sorry."

"It's alright, kiddo; just tell us." If only Cyborg knew how not-alright it was.

She took a deep breath. "Well, it's about…Slade." She imagined that Robin flinched back slightly—but she didn't imagine it when Raven held his hand.

The other words she needed wouldn't come, so she had to wait until Starfire spoke up from the arm of the couch, "What about Slade?"

This was it, and she had to tell, and Terra couldn't stop the pitiful sound that was somehow coming from her, and she definitely couldn't think of anything to say until Beast Boy supplied, "Tell them, Terra."

So she did. She had to. "I…I lied. Slade was…I did…I've been working for Slade. And I did…stuff with him. Like, really bad stuff. Like, _did _stuff you know?"

When no response came, Beast Boy sighed. "What she means is—"

And before she could even _think _of what he might put on the end of that sentence, Raven was on her feet, eyes flashing crimson with sudden recognition, righteous fury. "I know _exactly _what she means. That's it. You _did,_ didn't you?"

"Umm…did what?"

"You slept with him," said Raven. She strode towards her, punctuating each word with another, ferocious step. "You slept with him, didn't you, you dirty whore? And you weren't sorry. You weren't sorry at _all."_

"Was too!"

"Now you're a lying whore."

"But I—" Terra didn't say anything else after that, mostly because she was crying, mostly because Raven's fist had connected with her face and she could have sworn that she'd felt her nose break, and Raven wasn't stopping, was hitting her and screaming every bad word Terra knew and a few that she'd never heard of…and suddenly, finally, it stopped. Well. Raven was still screaming but she wasn't hitting her anymore, and when Terra opened one cautious eye she realized that Cyborg was holding her with her arms pinned behind her, dragging her away from Terra, face grim.

_"Raven!" _he shouted. "You have no right to accuse her of something like that!"

"The hell I don't. I knew she'd done something. I _knew it."_ She tried to twist out of his grip but Cyborg held her tightly, which Terra was grateful for. But the next words out of her mouth were almost worse than being hit. "Admit it any time you feel like it, but you'd better do it quickly if you want to use your voice, because I'm going to tear you apart—and I think I'll start with your vocal chords."

"Get a hold of yourself, Raven," said Cyborg fiercely, shaking her. "She didn't do that, right, Terra?"

"But I _did!"_ Terra sobbed, cringing away and trying to hide behind Beast Boy, who wasn't a very good hiding place because he wasn't big enough. "I did and I'm sorry and it was bad and I didn't like it and I was wrong and please, _please _don't kill me!"

And Raven would kill her, Terra realized. There was nothing Cyborg could do about it once she decided to use her powers, she'd kill her like she almost killed Slade at the hospital, and Terra kind of wished that Raven _had _killed Slade at the hospital, because then at least none of this would have happened.

"Do you even comprehend what you've done? Do you comprehend what _he _did? Are you so stupid that you don't even know what 'comprehend' means? Cyborg, let me _go!"_

"No!"

Poor Starfire didn't know which way to turn, looking from Terra to Cyborg to Raven and back again, pain plastered all over her face. _"Please,_ we must _not _fight each other! Nothing will be accomplished with such…"

Then, somehow, Terra wasn't looking into Raven's blood red eyes anymore, because somebody else was looking at them for her—Robin, standing between her and Raven, breathing heavily and looking ready to pass out. "Stop it—Raven, stop it _now!"_

Raven stopped. Completely.

"This isn't Terra's fault," he said, and Terra felt a rush of gratitude. It was the first thing she'd heard all night that she liked. "…It's mine." Raven started to say something that probably wasn't very nice, but Robin interrupted her. "It _is_. I'm a horrible leader not to have known this would happen, not to have protected her. Guys, I _know_ how Slade manipulates people. That's all this was, and I didn't stop it when I should have."

Robin turned to face Terra then, and she saw him flinch away at seeing her face—maybe it was because he was disgusted with her, only with what he said next, Terra didn't think it could be that. "I'm so sorry. You _didn't _deserve this. It's…it's all my fault."

But that was wrong, it had to be, Robin was good, he was _so _good, he put everyone before himself, always—there was no way this could be his fault. So Terra put her face in her hands because he was just trying to make her feel better and it wasn't working.

Starfire started to tell Robin that it wasn't his fault at _all,_ but Beast Boy had other ideas. He stepped away from Terra slightly, glaring at Raven.

_"_Robin's right. He did the same thing, Raven, the _same damn thing. _He lied to us, he stole stuff for Slade, he even _fought _us. And I don't see you hitting him, huh?"

Cyborg had relaxed his grip on Raven after she'd stopped struggling, so she was able to twist an arm away from him, almost grabbing Beast Boy by the shirt but missing. Her words didn't miss, though. "If you _ever _compare Robin's sacrifices to that whore's fucking Metal Face again…"

"And _you _will not speak about Terra in such a manner!" Starfire's raised voice made Terra cringe, and when she snatched up Raven's wrist, Terra was too shocked to continue crying.

"Guys," Robin interrupted weakly, as if his last outburst had taken all the strength he'd had left. "I—I need to leave."

Beast Boy gaped at him. "You can't—"

"We'll handle this as a team when we can all address it rationally." He looked meaningfully around the room. "Without hitting, screaming, or name-calling."

"You can't just go leader mode on us now!" Beast Boy was back at Terra's side, and when she reached for his hand he didn't shove her away. Thank god.

"I just did, Beast Boy," said Robin. He turned to Terra, his mask seeming a thousand miles wide. "Until proven otherwise, this is on my shoulders, and you're still one of us."

"I'm sorry," said Terra miserably.

"It's okay. Cyborg, take her to the infirmary and get her face taken care of. I want her contained there and kept away from any computer, though. No offense, Terra. Everyone else, _drop it_ until tomorrow."

Terra didn't want to be locked in the infirmary but the idea of Cyborg taking care of her face didn't sound half bad, because it was really starting to hurt…and Cyborg had been really nice the last time, when she'd sprained her wrist.

"I'm not dropping anything until—"

"Raven. _Tomorrow." _He met her incredulous glare evenly. Terra thought that he was going to be in a lot of trouble for telling off his girlfriend. Even if his girlfriend had just punched Terra in the face.

Cyborg, for one, seemed to think that this was a fantastic idea, and let go of Raven as soon as Robin got her to promise that she wouldn't attack anything. Gently peeling Terra away from Beast Boy, he began to lead her out of the room without a word. Beast Boy started to follow but Cyborg shook his head. Terra thought that was for the best. She felt like she could talk to Cyborg right now, if she could talk to anyone, but not Beast Boy. She'd said what she needed to say to Beast Boy and somehow—somehow it hurt too much to think of saying any more.

* * *

"That hurt?"

Terra held the ice pack to her cheek, leaning back against the pillows carefully. "Uh uh. Not as much anymore."

"Good," said Cyborg, turning away from her to clean up. He hesitated, then said in a rush, "I need a blood sample, too."

She blinked, putting her arms instinctively behind her at the thought of a needle. "Blood...?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, Terra, but I have to."

"But—But why?"

He hesitated, then said softly, "Because you said you slept with him. And that means there's some tests we need to run. Have you—" his voice broke off, and she thought he was blushing, but couldn't be sure since his skin was so dark. "Have you started having your menstrual cycle yet?"

Biting her lip, she shook her head. She'd researched afterwards, when she'd thought maybe she was pregnant, so she knew what he was talking about. And she knew the blood she'd had wasn't it.

He nodded, looking relieved, and gently extracted one of her arms and tied a rubber cord around it. "Then you almost certainly can't have gotten pregnant yet. Um. When. Did it happen, I mean. Or if it was more than once, I need the first and last dates."

"It was only once," she whispered, not sure what he was talking about, feeling her blood pulse against the cord. "Um. It was a couple weeks ago. Maybe like a week after the fight. You know. The one at the hospital."

He nodded, and poked the needle in her vein, and she looked away, biting her lip. "Long enough that something _could_ show now, then. We'll have to do a couple more over the next few months. It could show up to six months after."

"_What_ could?" she demanded, frightened now, as he took out the needle and swabbed her arm with something and then put a big square Band-Aid on it.

He shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I mean, he's probably clean. He seems way too paranoid to catch anything. We're just being on the safe side."

"On the safe side of _what_?"

"HIV. Hepatitis. Did he—was it unprotected sex?"

She blinked, confused. "Who would protect it?"

This time she was _sure_ he was blushing, and it would have been funny if she wasn't so scared. "Was he wearing a condom?"

"I don't-- I don't think so. But they're—they're like diseases and stuff, aren't they? You think I got a _disease_ from it?" she asked, trying to remember what she'd heard about the words he'd said earlier. They'd never seemed like they had anything to do with her before, so she'd never paid much attention.

"Probably not. We just have to be on the safe side, right? Just till I say we're clear, if you bleed or anything, make sure you clean it up, wrap up whatever you clean it with in plastic and throw it away, okay? No bloody tissues in the trash, don't touch anyone till you've cleaned with soap and water and it's bandaged. Even if it's just like a paper cut, don't leave it uncovered, okay?"

She stared at him, barely able to breathe. "What's wrong with my blood?"

"Probably nothing! Just if it _is_ something, you don't want to risk passing it on to anyone else, okay? I'll have the preliminary results for you tomorrow, but like I said, it can take up to six months to be completely sure. Don't worry about it. Just -- just be careful if you bleed, okay?"

She managed a jerky nod, feeling the blood pulsing through her veins, knowing it was poisonous, dangerous, something to fear. How could _anyone_ think that sex was good?

He nodded. "Okay. Seriously, I'm probably just being paranoid. Anyway, I guess that's it for now," he added, moving towards the door. Reaching it, he paused. "Look, I'm sorry about having to keep you in here and all that," he said hesitantly. "It's not that we don't trust you…"

"It's just that you don't trust me," Terra finished. The way Cyborg looked over his shoulder with that…guilty look made her feel like maybe it would be okay if…if… "Cy, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." He placed something in a biohazard bag, then removed his gloves and tossed them in, too.

"What's gonna…_happen_ to me?" She almost choked on the lump in her throat, dissolving into a puddle of coughing until Cyborg offered her a glass of water.

He sighed, pulling the blanked up to her waist. "I'm not sure how to answer that, kiddo. I don't want to make promises I can't keep."

"You guys aren't gonna…punish me, or whatever, are you? Like, _hurt _me and stuff?" _Or kill me._

"Are we going to—no, we're not going to hurt you! Jeez, Terra!"

She looked up at him, trying to believe him, cheek throbbing where she could still feel Raven's handprint. "Oh. Well…that's good, I guess."

"Look, I can't say for sure what's going to happen tomorrow. A lot of that will be up to Robin, you know. But I think you should know him well enough to know that he'd never condone anything like that, alright?"

"Condone…?"

He smiled. "It means he'd never agree to it."

_Well he could have just _said _that... _"Oh. Okay. And Cyborg?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm really sorry. Like, _really._ If that helps." She rolled onto her side, facing the wall. "…At all."

She felt his huge hand on her shoulder. It could practically cover half her back. "It does, Terra." Cyborg settled the blanket under her chin, getting up to dim the lights. "And I know you are."

Terra squeezed her eyes shut as the room went dark, covering her ears with her hands because she didn't want to hear the lock clicking. But she heard it anyway.

* * *

**It's my birthday today! Reviews are the best presents. ;)**


	12. Burden of Proof

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Twelve: Burden of Proof

* * *

**

It was like waking up and suddenly realizing that you were a stranger in somebody else's house. A stranger who wasn't supposed to be there, and before you could stop yourself, you'd already messed up their beds and eaten their food and walked all over their floors. She'd done that, a few times. Loads of people went on vacation and left ways for someone to get in. It was bad, but when you were so hungry you were starting to see black spots in front of your eyes, you didn't worry so much about being bad.

Besides, Terra was bad no matter what she did. She was starting to wonder if it would be easier just to accept it.

So Terra didn't get up from her cot, arms by her sides, trying not to move around too much because this bed did_ not_ feel like it belonged to her. The clock on the wall told her that it was late enough for even Beast Boy to probably be awake, but no one had come to take her out of the infirmary. She was really bored and kind of wanted to get up and look at all the things in here that she'd never gotten a close look at before—but the feeling that she was only borrowing the bed, the room, the whole _Tower_…that feeling kept her head glued to the pillow and her face fixed on the ceiling. Well, and it was _true,_ wasn't it? Didn't Cyborg own the Tower, or something? Or maybe Robin, but Terra was pretty sure it was Cyborg. She wondered why he let Robin boss him around if it was really _his _house…

Cyborg didn't seem to want to do anything too bad to her. Even if she was bad and probably deserved it, he didn't. Maybe he could convince Robin. And maybe Robin could convince Raven, since they were going out. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Terra shuddered and pulled the covers over her head, carefully so she didn't mess up the bed any more than she already had, and she stayed still for as long as she possibly could, wondering how long it would take for her to suffocate under there.

But she didn't get to find out, because of a quiet knock at the door, followed by heavy footsteps.

Terra was still wearing her clothes from yesterday, and they must have been all wrinkled but she didn't even care. Cautiously, she peeked over the blanket and tried to find a half-hearted smile for Cyborg when he said, "Time to talk, okay, kiddo?"

She spent the walk to the living room staring at her Band-Aid, thinking about what was underneath—probably some blood, because of the needle—and how it was _bad _and it might hurt other people…and, even worse, hurt her. _Kill_ her. She wondered if Cyborg had the results yet but couldn't make her mouth open wide enough to ask him. She also wondered if he'd told Beast Boy. He would probably have to be really careful now and he should _not _be touching that Band-Aid, he just shouldn't; and oh god she had to be careful when she took it off that she didn't forget not to just throw it in the trash can, because even if it was just a little bit and it was dried, it might still be bad…

Starfire's thin smile pulled her eyes away from her arm, and Terra had to think about it for a few seconds before she realized that the wave was meant for her. Red hair tumbled over her shoulders as she leaned forward and patted the couch next to her, indicating that Terra should sit there. Terra obeyed, keeping all of her attention on Starfire's face and none of it on the girl in the black leotard behind her, the one who was _definitely _glaring at everyone else in the room.

On the floor, Beast Boy sent her a look that was probably supposed to be encouraging, and it would have been, if he hadn't looked so much like he was going to cry.

"Terra, we've made our decision about your status here," said Robin, who was standing in the center of the room looking completely alert, of course. He'd probably been up for _hours,_ doing more work than Terra did in a week.

She held her breath and waited, jumping when Starfire's hand found hers but finding it a comfort that she hadn't even realized she'd wanted.

"You can stay," he began, and he said other things, too, but Terra didn't hear anything else, just those wonderful words over and over in her head as she squeezed Starfire's hand, hard.

"Does that sound realistic to you, Terra?" Starfire asked, nudging her as if she knew that Terra hadn't been listening.

"Umm…I…I'm sorry, but you lost me at 'you can stay'."

She heard a loud sigh from the back of the room. "Not only loyal, but _intelligent,_ too!"

Starfire had dropped Terra's hand in an instant, twisting around to look at Raven, expression solid and steadfast. "There is _no_ need for—"

"I said this was a discussion, remember?"

Like a balloon deflated, Starfire stopped speaking, the protective anger still there but no longer uncontrollable as she melted back into her seat and nodded an apology in Robin's direction. Beast Boy seemed to be just about to stand up but he stayed where he was, with a deferential look at Robin. There was something...different about Robin's voice, infused with something Terra had never heard before. She'd always known he was the leader but he'd never acted…well, quite like this. He didn't even raise his voice. But somehow, they listened anyway.

Robin turned his attention to Terra, and she had to fight a particularly strong urge to look at the floor. "I said that you can stay, but there will be precautions taken. Ones that you might not like, and I'm sorry but that's the way it has to be."

_Great. Rules._ "What do you mean?"

"You're to be with one of us at all times," he said. "You'll continue to fight with us, if you want to, and we'll still consider you part of the team. But we can't leave you alone."

"But…you can't, like, sleep in my _room!" _If having a room was even part of the deal. For all she knew, they could be planning to keep her in a cage at night. She was starting to feel cold, and not even Starfire's hand was helping.

It made things only a tiny bit better when Cyborg took over the explanation. "No, nothing like that but… I'm sorry, Terra, but we need to make sure you're…safe, in your room at night, I mean."

"How are you going to do that?"

"Well…" Cyborg sighed heavily. "You know how we had things last night? That's the way it's going to have to be, for a little while."

At first, she thought they meant she would have to sleep in the infirmary, and then she realized. "You're locking me in my room?" She scooted back into the couch cushions, trying to peel Starfire's hand away from hers but Terra didn't exactly have super strength.

Reluctantly, Robin nodded, as if this he wanted to make sure that everybody knew it was his fault, not Cyborg's (except it was really Terra's fault).

Well, that made sense, she had to admit. Did she really expect that they wouldn't keep the criminal locked up? That's what you _did _with criminals, after all. She should be counting herself lucky that they didn't really want to keep her in a cage. That they didn't want to send her to jail.

But…was she any better than the people they sent to jail? Was _this _any better than a prison?

Terra tried to push her hair behind her ear but it just wouldn't stay back.

* * *

Starfire was waiting for her outside the door when Robin finally said that Terra could go. Terra smiled gratefully, trying to put as much distance between herself and the workroom as possible. He'd told her that she had to come talk to him, but Terra normally thought of talking as something that didn't consist of her sitting across from Robin for hours watching him type on his computer while he asked her humiliating questions. "Talking" to Robin had been exhausting, more so than every other time they'd had something like a conversation. She'd mostly kept her eyes on his keyboard, finding it difficult to look at his face, for some reason—even though he was wearing the mask, it felt like he could see her insides. There had been questions about everything Terra could have possibly imagined, and several questions about things she couldn't have imagined, too; things that couldn't possibly have mattered. She had tried her best to remember, but Terra wasn't exactly able to recall word for word every conversation she'd had with Slade and, well, that was basically what he had asked her to do. 

He had acted weird at a few points. Like when Terra remembered the time that Slade had given her that disk and wouldn't say what it was for: Robin kind of looked like he had choked on something, and it bothered her, so she asked what had happened to the disk. He immediately asked her a question about the layout of Slade's headquarters and refused to say anything else. And when Terra was admitting everything she'd said about the Titans, from the fact that Beast Boy liked to watch cartoons for at least an hour in the mornings before he was properly awake to Robin going out with Raven. Robin immediately said that they weren't. Terra thought he'd said it a little too fast.

Starfire fell into step beside her, not saying anything at first, but Starfire wasn't somebody who liked long silences, so it didn't take long. "Friend, perhaps you would enjoy a movie with me?"

Halfway into the act of accepting with relief, Terra suddenly realized that this was probably just the beginning of the Rules. Realized the coincidence of Starfire just _happening _to be right outside Robin's workroom right after he was finished with her. "You just have to follow me around 'cos Robin said, don't you?" she asked, looking at her shoes.

Her eyes reflected genuine confusion, and then she shook her head. "It is true that we have all been asked to keep watch over you for your safety, but that was not the reason for my invitation, no. Truthfully, I thought it might be enjoyable to spend the evening with you."

"You couldn't want to hang out with me," said Terra. "Not after…all that."

"But I_ do_ wish to do the hanging out!" Her expression softened and she reached out to touch Terra's shoulder, almost sadly. "Yesterday, you considered me a good friend. I hope this has not changed simply because of these regrettable circumstances."

That wasn't it, that wasn't it at _all,_ and no matter how gross Terra was, she couldn't let Starfire think that, so she had to bob her head up and down and say that she would _love _to watch a movie. Starfire filled the hall with chatter about the various options they had and which ones would be "most appealing," and Terra was so glad that at least she could count on _somebody _to know what to say all the time. That was one of her favorite things about Starfire. She always knew what to say. The one thing that would keep everyone…balanced. Cyborg kind of did, too, but he didn't like girl movies.

They were in Starfire's room, because Terra didn't want to be in the living room where Raven could just walk in any time—and she was kind of afraid to confront Beast Boy, since they hadn't really talked alone since…since the restaurant and the girls' bathroom and McKenzie and _everything_…so it would be better to stay out of everyone's way.

It was a pretty good movie; Terra liked the talking dragon, though she felt sorry for the girl because she had to wear disgusting clothes and cut her hair and even after all that, nobody was even _nice _to her or anything. But just when the army finally started to like Mulan, Starfire decided to ask a question.

"Terra?" She poked her in the elbow, looking over at her from the other side of her bed. "I…I do not understand, though I am trying to."

"Huh? Understand what? The movie?" But Terra knew exactly what Starfire didn't understand, and it had nothing to do with girls dressing up like boys and shooting arrows.

Starfire trailed her finger along the seam of her bedspread. "No, not that. Your…unfortunate situation with Slade. I…well…" She turned her gaze back to the movie, though Terra could see the way her eyes were out of focus and distracted. Finally, the words came out with a soft, slight hesitation. "Did Slade force you?"

Terra felt her mouth get dry as she turned the question over and over in her head, trying to think of an answer that wouldn't make her sound awful—and wasn't a lie, because Terra was _done _with lying, she _was. _But—the truth was—he _didn't _force her. No matter how bad it had been, he didn't. He'd asked her to take her clothes off, and she should have said no if she didn't want to, but she did it, oh god, why did she do it just because he asked… It might have been easy at the time, but it wasn't easy now. She shivered and shrank away from Starfire, balancing on the edge of the bed with one leg hanging over the side.

And then Terra knew the truth: that there was _nothing _she could say that wouldn't make her sound awful. But what was worse, what she realized when she looked at Starfire, who'd now made eye contact and was biting her lip—Starfire _knew _that. She'd wanted Terra to really admit how awful she was; this was just like the huge talk with Robin…the whole point was to get Terra to confess every tiny bad thing she'd ever done in her life, which was just mean and it wouldn't help her be less bad, so why did she have to do it?

Terra half-crawled, half-fell off the bed, somehow managing to keep her footing as she turned and shook her head at Starfire, eyes blurry and throat constricted. "Okay, I get it! I get that I'm bad; you don't have to keep _saying _it over and over like that!"

Starfire started to say something but the automatic door had finally slid open (it couldn't have been fast enough) and Terra was running down the hallway before she even thought about the Rules.

And once she did think about them, she didn't care that she was breaking them.

* * *

She was _bad._ She was a _bad girl._ _Everybody_ knew. 

The sink felt cold under her palms as she leaned against it, hair falling over her face so she wouldn't have to look in the mirror. She listened to herself breathe in and out, trying to imagine that she was breathing away all the badness, except it didn't work because nothing would work. Maybe some water on her face would make her feel better. Terra was halfway into the act of turning on the faucet when someone grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

"You're not supposed to be, y'know, alone. So I thought I'd make sure you were…okay. Y'know." Beast Boy blushed and turned away, dropping her hand just a little too eagerly.

"Make sure I was okay, or make sure I wasn't stealing your stuff to give to Slade?"

He took a step away from her, putting some distance between them as he leaned against the frame, keeping the door from closing. Somehow, it seemed to be annoyed. "No, no, it wasn't anything like that…"

She pulled at her hair. "Yes it was."

"I…look, Terra, you kind of _did,_ okay? I know you don't like this, and I'm sorry, but it's not like we don't have any reason to think you might…do something."

"I wouldn't though. Do something, I mean." She'd already admitted it; she'd admitted everything. Why couldn't that just be enough? First Robin, then Starfire, and now Beast Boy. She wiped at her eyes, skin raw from too much crying. "I know I'm bad, and I know I did bad stuff, but there's only so many different ways I can say it, you know!"

Beast Boy swallowed. "Jeez, Terra, is that what you think I wanted to talk about? Is that why you think I'm here? First of all, I followed you 'cos of what Robin said about you not being allowed to be alone. And second of all, what I was _gonna _say was that this doesn't change...us. Y'know. I mean—I still want to—be—it doesn't change us."

For a long moment, Terra couldn't find her voice, shock hitting her like a slap as she realized what he was talking about. Somehow, she'd never considered that this would…this would make things different, would make him want to—she'd never considered it, and she immediately thought herself an idiot for _not _considering it. Because what she did—it had been like _cheating,_ hadn't it?

"I never meant for—didn't want—oh my god, Beast Boy, I'm so sorry…" She choked on whatever words were supposed to come out next, halfway into the act of reaching out to him, but at his hesitant expression she settled on burying her face in her hands, feeling them shake.

He let her stand there and cry for awhile, which was mean but Terra couldn't really blame him. Finally, his hand touched hers, gently pulling her palms away from her face, and when she looked up he was standing right next to her, so close that their toes were practically touching.

"You really hurt me, you know," he said, and she just nodded because she knew it was true. Beast Boy sighed. "I don't get why. I don't think I'll ever get why. And if you decide that you wanna tell me, I'm listening."

But when Terra tried to think about why, all she could come up with was that night, with the message about taking a shower, and the elevator that went down and down forever, and the way Slade's calloused hands had gripped her wrists so tightly they left red marks the next morning, and the point when she realized how big he was and oh god he was an _adult_ and he was _on top of her_ and that was so wrong, and how she'd closed her eyes because she didn't want to see, because maybe if she couldn't see she'd be able to stop _feeling_…Terra didn't know why. "I can't," she whispered, pushing the sickness and shame back into her belly where it belonged.

He nodded solemnly. Or as solemnly as Beast Boy did anything. "Okay. I guess I'll just—be over here, not getting it, if you need me." He squeezed her fingertips briefly and then let them go, and his hands were small and soft and uncertain and not at all like Slade's. They weren't like Slade's, but when he backed away again that didn't make it better.

"Can I at least wash my face by myself?"

"Umm, I guess," said Beast Boy. He took a few more backwards steps until he was just outside the threshold to the door, hand in the doorway to keep it from closing.

"Beast Boy, later can we maybe—"

"I think Cyborg had some stuff he wanted to talk to you about. And I'm sure you probably don't exactly want me around right now. So I think when you're done with your face, I should just…take you to see him. Okay?"

Terra wanted to be around Beast Boy and he knew it, and that wasn't the point of getting her to talk to Cyborg. He wanted her to go _away_, because she'd failed the test, hadn't been able to say why—she hadn't been able to answer Starfire's question, either, and now they were punishing her for it. But there was nothing she could do. She'd just have to go talk to Cyborg about scary things like blood and diseases. And what if he made her get another shot… Shivering, she pasted a smile over the rapid breathing and cold feeling in her stomach, told Beast Boy that she'd be right out, and watched as the door closed between them with an awful sound that she suspected could be heard for miles.

The water felt prickly on her skin, mixed with the salt from her tears, and it was supposed to be purifying but it wasn't, and it wasn't nearly as cold as she'd wanted.

* * *

**Thank y'all so much for being understanding as I struggle through summer classes! I'm trying to work on these stories as much as I can, and I will try to have the next chapter out ASAP. Next update will be BL only due to timeline differences, then we'll get back to CD. Comments are appreciated and loved! Take care!**


	13. Loaded Question

**Cognitive Dissonance**

**Chapter Thirteen: Loaded Question**

* * *

Terra hadn't been sleeping. She said that she was, but she wasn't. It wasn't _really_ a lie, she'd decided, because it was only a lie if it hurt somebody—and this didn't do anything but make her really tired, so it was okay.

Sometimes, she'd be able to sleep for a little while in the afternoon or later in the morning, with all the lights on and her head turned away so she couldn't see the bars that they'd put on her windows last week and hadn't taken off. Even though she had her tracker on her wrist all the time now, which meant that she no longer had to be locked in her room, they still hadn't taken off the bars. It was to keep her from opening the window, summoning up a rock, and running away to tell Slade stuff. Synthetic metal bars, so Terra couldn't touch them with her powers—they were dead to her, lacking even a tiny ounce of earth to grab onto. It made her feel helpless. Naked.

It made her feel like they'd just wanted to decorate her room to look like a jail cell.

Lying on her back with her hands behind her head, she tried to count all the sparkly stars on her ceiling, eyes moving from right to left but losing focus somewhere in the middle. They'd put them there. For her. They'd decorated it with green and yellow and brown, but her favorite color was _red,_ and they didn't care She'd _told _them it was her favorite, and they didn't even _care._

Red like fire. Red like blood. Red like Lady Macbeth in that play that she'd had to read last month because Robin made them take classes, and she couldn't get the red out of her hands no matter what, it would _never_ come out…

Terra shuddered and closed her eyes; because for some reason, counting the stars wasn't as comforting anymore. She thought that maybe she should sleep because it was so late that it was early—way too early for anyone to be up, except maybe Robin because he didn't ever really sleep. So she tried to roll over and think about nothing, but she ended up pulling her pillow to her stomach and thinking about the tracker on her wrist, the little, black band that she might have been able to pass off as a bracelet, except it wasn't meant to look pretty and it didn't. When she did sleep, it was always the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes. It kind of got stuck in front of her face, like someone was trying to remind her of why the others didn't trust her, why nobody could ever trust her again.

Terra finally gave up on trying to sleep. Peeling back the covers, she swung her feet over the side of her bed and stood up, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she started for the bathroom. She was allowed to go places by herself now that she had the tracker, since it wasn't convenient for everybody to have to watch her all the time. At least, she could go places inside the Tower. They didn't let her leave by herself. Cyborg said that she still wasn't ready yet, but that was stupid because Terra had been by herself all her life, so why did he think she was suddenly _scared _of it, or something? It was a lie. Like all the other lies about how one day she'd earn their trust back, how what happened wasn't her fault, how everything would work out okay in the end. Cyborg lied a lot. Maybe he was lying about her blood test, too; maybe the results weren't negative and she really _would _die from her infected blood. Terra thought that she should care more than she did, but thinking it wouldn't make her care more.

She was starting to wonder if it even mattered, anyway.

Terra was planning on taking a shower, but voices from the living room made her stop. It was _way _too early for anyone else to be awake—the only good excuse was not sleeping at all, like her. Guilt welled up in her, and she knew that she shouldn't do it, but she found herself walking quietly towards the living room door anyway, because if they were talking about her, at least then she'd know what they'd said. Then maybe she could figure out what to do about it.

What she saw didn't surprise her, but it almost made her start laughing and give herself away.

_You're not going out with her, huh, Robin? _Terra rolled her eyes as she watched Raven give him a hug, kept her arms around him and let her chin rest on his shoulder, saying something that was too quiet for Terra to hear. Robin was going somewhere, he'd told them two days ago, and he would be back Tuesday, but he didn't say where he was going or why, and Terra hadn't thought that he would leave so early in the morning. He was wearing jeans. It made him look really weird. And a little older.

Robin must not have heard Raven, either, because Raven repeated what she'd said, and when she did it made Terra want to throw up.

"…Go see Batman."

The first part was still too quiet for Terra to hear, but she didn't need to hear it all. Well, of _course._ She was so _stupid, _because he was Robin, wasn't he, and she'd never thought about what that meant, but he _knew _Batman, probably worked with him and stuff, and… Terra didn't know too much about Batman because she'd never really bothered much with other superheroes—why did it matter; they'd never saved _her _when she'd been ten years old and starving and thirsty and hot... She didn't know much about Batman, but she knew enough: he was really scary and really mean and really huge, and Terra would be perfectly happy for him to never know she existed. Except. Oh, god. Robin must have told him about her. So he would know. About her. And how bad she was.

She forced herself to turn back to the conversation. Robin didn't let go of Raven, just sighed and said, "No. Just mad at myself that this is so hard."

He sounded upset, and it was sweet when Raven started rubbing his shoulder, but she couldn't think about that because of what Raven was _saying._ "You haven't seen him in almost a year and now you're going to tell him that something terrible happened to you. Of course it's hard."

Something terrible. _Terra _was the "something terrible," wasn't she? She had to be—nothing had happened to Robin since she'd met him except him going out with Raven, and that wasn't anything like terrible. Well, it kind of was, since Raven was so mean, but she wasn't mean to _him, _so it shouldn't count as terrible. Probably. And of course Robin would be upset, because he probably didn't want to tell Batman what she'd done, but he was going to do it anyway because Raven wanted him to—Raven hated her, so of course she'd ask. No wonder Robin hadn't told where he was going. No wonder he was leaving so early before anybody else was up.

"…Make things better in the long run; I wouldn't have encouraged you if I didn't really believe that." They'd pulled away from each other so Raven was looking straight at him with her arms still around his neck, and now Terra could see that…that he…he wasn't wearing the mask. At all. She couldn't really see his eyes from here, but she could see that she'd been wrong; they were blue, not green.

And it would make things better in the long run, wouldn't it, if Robin told him about all the bad things that she'd done and he just…took care of her. It would make things a lot better, for _Raven, _because she'd always wanted to get rid of Terra, even before anything had happened, and it would be really mean for Batman to kill girls, but he _was_ kind of mean, and maybe he would... Terra turned away and leaned against the wall, staring down at her hands—she kind of liked the way they shook.

Already, she was wondering if there was any way to keep it from happening. If she left right now and nobody saw her, the tracker would go off, but maybe she could find some way to cut it or break it before the others woke up. And once she got away, she didn't know if that would really help, but at least it would be something. Terra couldn't just…_sit _here, counting the stars on her ceiling and thinking about red stuff and wondering when Batman was going to show up to kill her.

At first, she didn't even realize that running away was against the Rules—well, she wasn't really running; she'd just go away for a little while and come back when it was safe. But even then, it was against the Rules.

Terra clenched her hands into fists and watched as the shaking slowed, then stopped, her breathing gradually returning to normal. For some reason, she felt calmer than she'd felt in a long time, maybe as calm as she'd ever been.

She didn't care about Rules. Not anymore. Not when Raven didn't play by the Rules.

Rules could go to hell.

She glanced back to the living room and couldn't decide if she was glad she did or not. They were kissing, and it kind of made Terra feel like she finally knew more than them about something, because she was definitely better at it than _that_. And not only had she been wrong about Robin's eyes, but she was also wrong about thinking that he'd had sex—because there was no way Robin could have ever even kissed anybody before this. It was short and sort of at the wrong angle and reminded her of when she'd first kissed Beast Boy in the hallway, and Terra felt a little guilty when they broke apart, like she'd seen something that was supposed to be private. Which she kind of had.

Well. If they didn't want her to see, they shouldn't have kissed each other right after they'd been talking about having Terra _killed_.

After that, Terra had to hide in a storage room for a few minutes while Robin left to go…wherever Batman lived. In some cave somewhere, probably. All by himself, and it was probably cold, too.

She waited until long after the noise of the elevator had stopped before she let the door slide open and shuffled down the hall. But she'd only taken fifteen steps—she counted because she was nervous—when Raven stopped her.

"Bit early for you."

She didn't sound angry, but Terra knew that she was. "I was gonna take a shower."

Raven crossed her arms over her chest. "Right. Sure you were."

"I _was _though!"

"Shower's that way, Terra," Raven said, pointing down the hall.

Terra swallowed the lump in her throat and looked at the floor.

"Look." Raven narrowed her eyes, a fire behind them that had nothing to do with whatever made her eyes turn red sometimes. "I don't know what's going on with you and I don't care. But if you hurt him, I _will _kill you. Understand?"

It didn't matter if she hurt Robin or not—Raven was going to kill her anyway, and Terra wasn't going to hurt Robin, but if she'd wanted to…it wouldn't have mattered. Terra's heart beat faster in a way that she wasn't sure she liked, but at the same time it made her feel stronger.

Raven couldn't know that she was strong, though.

So Terra kept her eyes on the floor, calling up the shaking that she'd stopped earlier, squeezing a tremor into her voice as she stammered out, "Uh huh, I promise that I didn't mean to do anything bad—I just want to take a shower now, okay, and then I'll go right back to my room and you won't have to look at me anymore today, would that be okay?"

"Fair enough. Have fun with that." Raven rolled her eyes and then was gone in a dark glimmer of not-light.

Terra wasn't going to take a shower. _Slade _had told her to take a shower, and she wasn't going to listen to Slade. She was only going to listen to _Terra_ from now on.

She wasn't going to take a shower—but she wasn't going to her room, either, and she definitely wasn't sleeping.

* * *

Okay, so eventually, she _did _go to her room for a little bit. It didn't count because she didn't stay there. And she'd gone to the kitchen first. She'd opened drawers and cabinets, one after another, grabbing anything that looked interesting, because she didn't know when she'd be able to come back and she needed to have some food. After that, she'd gone to her room and flung the food into a backpack she'd dragged out of her closet, adding a hairbrush and some clothes. Her fingers had grazed the heart-shaped picture frame that Beast Boy had given her last month, but she didn't pick it up. It was going to sit right there, because Beast Boy didn't like her any more than the others did—he was lying to her, just like _everybody _lied to her _all the time. _

And then she'd looked at her watch, realized that it was late enough that the others would be getting up soon, so she slung the backpack over her shoulders, stuffed some pillows under her sheets, and locked the door behind her. She hoped that by the time they figured out that she hadn't really gone in there because she was afraid of Raven, she'd be far enough away so it wouldn't matter.

The stupid tracker started beeping almost as soon as she stepped outside onto fresh earth, and calling up a cluster of ground to get her off the island took more effort than she'd needed in a long, long time. Stepping onto the swaying, trembling lump of dirt, she forced her heart to get out of her throat and back into her chest where it belonged. The wind played with her hair, and she sat down with her hands around her knees, staring out into the ocean as the sun got brighter and brighter on the top of her head. Before, she'd sometimes pretended that she had a magic carpet. It was kind of like that. Except this one was dirty. Like Terra. It was the only kind of magic carpet she could make.

And the tracker beeped, whiny and insistent on her left wrist, not shutting up for even a second as she tried to maneuver it off of herself. But it was too tight for that, and she didn't see any way to get the clasp open—there had been some kind of lock, and knowing Robin it had a password that only he knew. If she could get it off her, she could toss it into the water and it would sink down, down and nobody could ever use it to find her. Assuming it even still worked underwater. Thinking about the little blinking light going dead and still as it came to rest against a rock almost made her laugh.

But it wouldn't come off, no matter how hard she pulled. Her wrist was turning red.

She decided she'd have to find a better way. Maybe she could cut it somehow. But she didn't have anything to cut with. Terra groaned, wishing that she'd thought of that before she'd left, because they probably had at least a few sharp things at the Tower.

She thought about it for a few minutes as she stared into the water, following the dark shadow of a dolphin skimming the surface. Hardware stores had sharp things. Lots of them. Scissors and knives and electric saws. She pulled the clump of earth back into full focus, turning it to head towards the city, towards freedom from the tracker, even though it seemed like going back into the city would take her further from the other kind of freedom, the important kind that she _wanted_.

No. First, cut the tracker. _Then _she could find another rock and float away above the skyline and out into the ocean, and she'd follow dolphins and wonder what the clouds looked like and not stop until she'd found some place far, far away where she didn't have to be herself.

The first suitable place she came to wasn't the greatest area of town. On the outskirts of the city, near the area under the bridge where you didn't go if you wanted to come out alive—unless you were a superhero, of course. They'd saved a lot of people from being shot and beaten and worse under that bridge, and many like it.

Of course, Terra didn't think she'd ever be a superhero again, but she thought she'd probaly be okay down there anyway.

The store was right at the top of a small hill, a hill that was covered with weeds and thorns and probably had anthills everywhere and the parking lot wouldn't have disgusting bugs or anything—but she'd already stirred up the only anthill that mattered, though, so she didn't really care that she came to a stop almost on top of a huge hill crawling with the little things.

There was nobody around when she turned one way and then the other, noticing an abandoned park near the bottom on the hill—she didn't want to exactly touch down in the middle of the parking lot and have everybody stare at her, and then sooner or later somebody would recognize her and start demanding autographs… She shuddered and turned away from the rusted swing set, with one of the chains broken and dragging in the dirt, weaving around beer bottles and newspaper as the wind blew it. Swings shouldn't ever have to look like that. It was wrong, somehow.

Head down, she started up the hill towards the crumbling, purple sign that proclaimed, _Sammy's Home Improvement_. Personally, Terra thought that Sammy himself could exercise a little home improvement on his own store. But that didn't matter, as long as Sammy sold sharp things.

She stumbled on a rock that had the nerve to be sitting right in her path, yelping as she lost her balance and went flying towards a thick patch of vines and trash.

But she never hit the ground.

Because something grabbed her backpack and held on tight, snapping her back to her feet. A human something, because then there were hands clamping down on her shoulders as if they wanted to squeeze her into the ground and bury her. And for half a terrifying second, she thought it was Batman and wished she were dead.

Then, she realized who it _really _was, decided that it wasn't much better than Batman, and kept right on wishing she were dead.

Terra didn't turn around, because she didn't need to. She just let herself hang there limply in his grip, listening to the funny way her breathing sounded when it got faster and faster, the backpack pulling at the place underneath her arms.

And Slade's voice in her ear, his voice that was way, way too familiar, the unyielding mask leaned into her cheek and his hot breath wrapping itself around her as he spoke…

"Children shouldn't play with sharp objects, you know. They might hurt themselves. They ought to find a responsible adult to handle such matters."

One of his hands left her shoulder so all her weight fell on the right strap of the backpack, and she bit her lip against the pain. A whirring sound, and then she looked down to see him taking hold of her wrist as he dropped her other shoulder. It was probably easy for him because Terra didn't struggle—though her hands were shaking so it was hard for him to get a good grip. He turned it over, examining the black tracker critically.

"Very cute, Robin," he murmured, bringing the tiny, silver, spinning blade to Terra's wrist, holding her there with the same armored hand. She gasped, fully expecting to see her arm turn red with slippery blood, but Slade was good at cutting, he was responsible, just like he'd said, and the tracker snapped free and fell into his other hand. Before she could blink, the little saw had disappeared into one of the many compartments at his waist, and the tracker had fallen to the ground, sliced open around the band so it continued to blink and beep as if nothing had happened.

Without thinking, Terra stooped to pick it up, but his other hand yanked her back upright by the backpack.

"I don't think you'll be needing that," he murmured. "Not where you're going."

Terra didn't know where she was going and didn't want to know, but had a feeling she'd be finding out sooner than she was ready for, because he was dragging her past the rusty swing set, away from Sammy's Home Improvement and into the forest that bordered the park, and Terra tried to look back towards the road but he turned her head sharply into his chest, holding it there as he moved.

Terra coughed, fighting for words. "Let—let me go—I don't want to—"

"It doesn't really matter what you want, does it, my dear?" Slade answered calmly. "It has come to my attention that _you_ have been a very, very naughty girl, and I believe you will regrettably have to learn that such behavior will not be tolerated."

"H-how am I gonna learn that?"

"Who knows," said Slade, stroking her hair in a parody of reassurance. "But rest assured that you will _learn."_

Terra was starting to think that _learning_ would be worse than whatever Batman wanted to do to her.


End file.
